Piracy in international waters is on the rise again, in particular off the coast of Somalia. While the dynamic game between pirates, ship-owners, insurance firms and the military seems to have reached some kind of equilibrium, piracy risks generating significant negative externalities to third...

European monetary integration was one element in the process of financial market integration but by far not the only one. The paper traces the development of financial markets and systems in Europe from the beginnings of the euromarkets in the 1950s over early exchange rate arrangements and the...

The paper presents a detailed description of IMF and World Bank conditionality and tries to explain changes in this conditionality over time as well as differences between the two institutions. Using panel data it is shown that the number of Fund conditions seem to be influenced by...

Microfinance is not a recent development, and neither is the development of regulation and supervision of microfinance institutions (MFIs). Every now developed country has its own history of microfinance. It is important to recognize this because it presents a view different from that of many in...

In our days, German machine tool makers accuse their Chinese competitors of violating patent rights and illegally imitating German technology. A century ago, however, German machine tool makers used exactly the same methods to imitate American technology. To understand the dynamics of this...

This paper reviews the German miners' model of mutual insurance from its introduction in 1854 to its basic reformation in 1923. Its core feature was the provision of cash benefits for compensation of income losses due to temporary sickness and permanent invalidity or death of the bread-winner....

Contemporary bank governance is criticized for manager-dominated (insider) boards of directors, but from the beginning of the nineteenth century, bank presidents appear also to have operated as chairmen of the boards of directors. However, the managers were constrained by a variety of rules that...