In contrast to earlier field studies, we survey German public savings banks on their management of capital. We find that the most important determinants of the savings banks’ target capital ratio are risk aversion, the desired credit growth and profitability. Savings banks prefer to manage the...

The savings banks’ decision to distribute profits among their public owners is strongly regulated by law in order to guarantee their adequate funding via retained profits. However, the legal scope is reluctantly exhausted. In this study we examine the determinants of the savings banks’...

Do private banks act as hard-nosed bankers when firms get financially distressed compared to public banks that have the mandate to support regional economy? For German firms in the period 2000-2005, I find that the probability of leaving the market after financial distress is higher for firms...

Start-up firms often face difficulties in raising external funds. Employing a unique panel dataset covering 9,715 start-up firms over the period 2007-2009, we find that high-tech startups are less likely to use bank finance and face more difficulties in raising bank finance than low-tech...

This paper aims to shed light on the role of technological opportunities for green innovation by studying the case of Green ICT innovation. We test two hypotheses: (1) Firms active in low-opportunity technological areas are less innovative; (2) Firms active in low-opportunity technological areas...