With a GDP ratio of 36 percent indebtedness of Austrian private households is relatively low when compared with other OECD countries. Still, a total of AS 721 billion at the end of 1991 no longer allows to neglect issues related to debt accumulation. From a macroeconomic point of view, credit...

The stock of financial assets owned by private households at the end of 1993 was estimated at almost Sch 2,100 billion. For the individual household this amounts to financial assets worth about Sch 660,000 on average, while indebtedness was slightly higher than Sch 260,000. These amounts may...

For many years private ownership in Austria's banking system was the exception rather than the norm, given the great importance of public ownership and the de facto "lack of ownership" in the credit cooperatives and the savings and loans sector. As a consequence, the question of foreign...