How does asset encumbrance affect the fragility of intermediaries subject to rollover risk? We offer a model in which a bank issues covered bonds backed by a pool of assets that is bankruptcy remote and replenished following losses. Encumbering assets allows a bank to raise cheap secured debt...

We solve and test experimentally a global-games model of speculative attacks where agents can choose whether to read, at a cost, a payoff irrelevant (sunspot) announcement. Assuming that subjects exogenously believe some others to follow sunspots, we provide conditions for a unique equilibrium...

We study a conflict of interest faced by universal banks that conduct proprietary trading alongside their retail banking services. Our dataset contains the stock holdings of each and every German bank and of their corresponding retail clients. We investigate (i) whether banks deliberately push...

German savers are renowned for preferring safe, long-term investments, thus providing patient capital, with bank deposits playing an important role. Using a comprehensive data set for the German banking sector, we examine whether German depositors are really that patient, abstaining from any...

Using a newly constructed panel dataset of German enterprises, I estimate R&D and capital investment equations for the time period from 1990 to 1994. Simple accelerator specifications indicate considerable sensitivity of R&D and investment to cash flow for relatively small firms. Much of this...

Using a Bayesian vector autoregression (BVAR) identified with a mix of sign and zero restrictions, we show that a restrictive bank loan supply shock has a strong and persistent negative impact on real GDP and the GDP deflator. This result comes about even though flows of other sources of...

The finding that industrial sectors differ in their dependence on external finance for sector-specific technological reasons and, thus, rely to a different degree on financial development has become a major concept in studies conducted on both growth and trade. Although natural resources might...

We utilize a new survey experiment to evaluate the existence and degree of financial constraints for R&D in the economy. The experiment does not only allow to deduct the presence of financial constraints, but also to evaluate their economic significance. Using data on German companies, we find...

This paper tests for the sensitivity of R&D to financing constraints conditional on restrictions in external financing. Financing constraints of firms are identified by an exogenously calculated rating index. Restrictions in external financing are determined by (i) the specific time period...