This thesis gives a voice to the chronically poor people of rural Bangladesh, enabling them to tell their own stories about the nature of their financial decision making which is taking place within the marketing systems that are operating in all poor villages in the region. Financial decision...

Financial planning in its broadest terms is now in the spotlight as it draws interest from a wide range of groups including consumers, regulators, government, the financial services industry, accountants and most importantly educators. This paper presents a descriptive analysis which provides a...

The important role of efficiency in the health care foodservice sector has been widely addressed in the literature. Different methods for assessing performance have been proposed. In general, most measures were calculated as simple ratios such as food and labour cost per meal or limited...

Research in this thesis deals with some unexplored, or only partially explored, issues relating to the information content of volatility of the idiosyncratic component of asset returns at the firm and industry-level, both in the context of developed and emerging stock markets. Specific issues we...

We begin with the outlining the motivation of this research as there are still so many unanswered research questions on our complex financial and economic systems. The philosophical background and the advances of econometrics and econophysics are discussed to provide an overview of the...

A large body of the literature argues that the soundness of financial system is largely determined by the economic and institutional environment in which the financial system works. Drawing on this theoretical underpinning, research in this thesis models financial soundness indicators (FSIs)...

In the process of globalization, international convergence of competition legislation has steadily gained importance. Yet, specific aspects of European history gave capital markets, corporate governance and competition policies a special flavor. Historically grown peculiarities have to be taken...

The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 remains one of the biggest urban disasters in American history. This paper gives a comprehensive overview of how the city coped with the immediate consequences of the catastrophe and quickly rebuilt. It analyzes the tense political situation of San Francisco...

This research project of the Research Institute for Social and Economic History at the University of Cologne is to clarify the process and causes of the theft of precious metals by the Nazis as well as explaining the economic utilization of the stolen property between 1938 and 1945, giving...

The law on Foreign Exchange Control, which had been passed as early as 1931 in oder to fight the scarcity of foreign currency, was used to impede the transfer of Jewish property abroad immediately after the Nazis came to power. However, only from 1935 on, legislation on foreign currency aimed at...