This paper analyses the role of banks in financing SMEs in Britain and Germany. It applies a sociological institutionalist approach to understand how banks construct and manage risk, relating to SME business. The empirical analysis is based on the results of a comparative survey of a sample of...

There is a widespread public perception that the provision of NAS undermines auditor independence. In order to protect auditor independence, the regulatory frameworks of many countries include regulations and guidelines which auditors are required to observe. This paper provides a comparative...

Zakat is one of the five pillars of Islam and can be understood as a form of religious duty, purifying one's wealth and at the same time functioning as a means to redistribute wealth to those in need. In Arabic, zakat means, among others, growth and purity (Dean and Khan 1997). In...

The United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development clearly recognises that poverty is more than just the lack of a sufficient amount of income. However, some scholars argue that an income-based measure of poverty can sufficiently capture poverty in other dimensions. Unfortunately, the...

Die vorliegende Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit dem Thema der Regulierung von Finanzmärkten, über die die Öffentlichkeit getrennter Meinung ist. Während Industrievertreter über die zahlreichen Vorschriften klagen, sehen manche Nicht- Regierungs-Organisationen in den Finanzmärkten ein...

This paper investigates the relationship between income satisfaction of adult children and their relative economic status, using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and income rank as an indicator of status. The results show that children appear to compare their actual economic status with...

This study compares the performance of Prospect Theory versus Stochastic Expected Utility Theory at fitting data on decision making under risk. Both theories incorporate well-known deviations from Expected Utility Maximization such as the Allais paradox or the fourfold pattern of risk attitudes....

In this paper, the amount of income redistribution in the United States, the European Union, and Switzerland is compared and empirically related to economic, political, and behavioral determinants elaborated in the literature. Lying in between the two poles, Switzerland provides unique evidence...

We estimate dynamic models of elder-care arrangements using data from the Assets and Health Dynamics Among the Oldest Old Survey. We model the use of institutional care, formal home health care, care provided by a child, and care provided by a spouse in the selection of each care arrangement,...

This paper investigates empirically how similarity of demand structures - approximated by similarity of income distributions - affects trade patterns along both the extensive and intensive margin. The idea that similarity of demand structures intensifies trade goes back to the well-known Linder...