Using a new set of monthly stock price data for a random sample of German companies, we investigate the pattern of common stock returns on the Berlin Stock Exchange between 1904 and 1910, when it ranked among the very top markets worldwide. We find that the CAPM performs poorly in this context:...

A firm's investment-cash flow sensitivity is often considered evidence of financial constraints, but such sensitivity may also stem from agency problems of free cash flows (managers overinvest). Close banking relationships are thought to ameliorate financing constraints and possibly agency...

Based on daily prices (amtliche Kurse) we estimate effective spreads of securities traded at the Berlin Stock Exchange in 1880, 1890, 1900 and 1910. Several extensions of the Roll measure are applied. We find surprisingly tight effective spreads for the historical data, comparable with similar...

The historical literature has traditionally paid much attention to the role of universal banking in the industrialization of Germany and has presumed, in line with Gerschenkron (1962), that the system gained preeminence in the late nineteenth century due to the general 'backwardness' of the...

The historical literature has traditionally paid much attention to the role of universal banking in the industrialization of Germany and has presumed, in line with Gerschenkron (1962), that the system gained preeminence in the late nineteenth century due to the general 'backwardness' of the...

The cross-section of average annual returns on German common stock in the period of 1881-1913 exhibits several of the patterns that have been observed in more recent U.S. data. Market beta is hardly important, and its explanatory power is swamped by size and the ratio of book value to market...

By studying the German universal banking system in the pre-World War I period, in comparison with its American and British counterparts, this paper investigates whether universality (the combination of commercial and investment banking services) influences banking industry concentration, levels...

This article poses three main questions: Does the civil-law tradition favor large, concentrated, universal banking systems? Does this sort of legal system work against the development of active securities markets? Do powerful universal banks (whether or not legal tradition lies at the root of...