The German Commercial Code (HGB) allows banks to build visible reserves for general banking risks according to section 340g HGB. These GBR reserves may, in addition to their risk provisioning function, be used to enhance capital endowment, for internal financing, signaling or earnings management...

The German Commercial Code (HGB) allows banks to build visible reserves for general banking risks according to section 340g HGB. These GBR reserves may, in addition to their risk provisioning function, be used to enhance capital endowment, for internal financing, signaling or earnings management...

The German Commercial Code (HGB) allows banks to build visible reserves for general banking risks according to section 340g HGB. These GBR reserves may, in addition to their risk provisioning function, be used to enhance capital endowment, for internal financing, signaling or earnings management...

Bank capital regulation is intended to promote bank safety and limit the risk of bank insolvency. Whether more stringent capital requirements lead to reduced or to (undesired) increased risk-taking of banks has been discussed controversially in the academic literature. It has so far been common...

Bank capital regulation is intended to limit the insolvency risk of banks. Whether more stringent capital requirements lead to reduced or to increased bank risk-taking has been discussed controversially in the academic literature. In this paper we drop the common assumptions that banks only...

Increasing risk disclosure of banks, e.g. via risk reporting in their annual accounts, is high on the agenda. In this paper, we analyse whether risk reporting of banks only shows favourable effects as supposed by regulatory authorities or whether there exist undesired effects as well. Referring...

Increasing risk disclosure of banks, e.g., via risk reporting in their annual accounts, is high on the agenda. In this paper, I analyze whether risk reporting of banks shows only favorable effects, as regulatory authorities suppose, or whether there are also undesired effects. Following other...

Theory of financial intermediation gives contradicting answers to the question whether banks should diversify or focus their loan portfolios. Our aim is to find out which of the two strategies is predominant in the German banking market. To this end we measure diversification for all German...

Banks face a tradeoff between diversifying and focusing their loan portfolio. In this paper we carry out an empirical study for the German market to shed light on the question whether or not the benefits of risk sharing outweigh those of specialization. We use data from the Bundesbank's...