This paper investigates whether self-employed households use consumer loans - in particular installment loans and overdrafts - to finance business activities. Controlling for financial and non-financial household variables we show that self-employed households particularly use personal...

In developing and transition economies, microlending has become an effective instrument for providing micro businesses with the necessary financial resources to launch operations. In the industrialized countries, with their highly developed banking systems, however, there has been ongoing debate...

With banking sectors worldwide still suffering from the effects of the financial crisis, public discussion of plans to place toxic assets in one or more bad banks has gained steam in recent weeks. The following paper presents a plan how governments can efficiently relieve ailing banks from toxic...

The request for a strengthening of academic research at the German economic research institutes by the German Science Council more than a decade ago was founded on the crucial insight that sound policy advice - the traditional task of the institutes - can only be guaranteed in the long term if...