This paper explores the relationship between risk attitude and asset diversification in household portfolios. We first examine the impact of manifested risk aversion on the total number of distinct assets held in a portfolio (naive diversification). The second part of the paper focuses on a more...

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...

Das präsentierte und diskutierte Modell eines sozialgebundenen Krankenversicherungswettbewerbs zeigt zum Ersten, dass ein derartiges System an vielen Stellen vom Staat reguliert werden muss. Es ist deutlich komplizierter als die bislang in der Diskussion befindlichen Lehrbuchmodelle und die...

Using micro-level panel data of about 35,000 firms from the German Cost Structure Census, we analyze the differences of technical efficiency across industries. Technical efficiency is estimated by firms? fixed effects. One striking result is that the distribution of technical efficiency across...

This paper investigates the factors that explain the level and dynamics of manufacturing firm productive efficiency. In our empirical analysis, we use a unique sample of about 39,000 firms in 256 industries from the German Cost Structure Census over the years 1992-2005. We estimate the...