Taking the mean-variance portfolio model as a benchmark, we compute the optimally diversified portfolio for banks located in France, Germany, the U.K., and the U.S. under different assumptions about currency hedging. We compare these optimal portfolios to the actual cross-border assets of banks...

This paper documents producer price setting in 6 countries of the euro area: Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Belgium and Portugal. It collects evidence from available studies on each of those countries and also provides new evidence. These studies use monthly producer price data. The following...

Information costs and regulatory barriers are the main distinguishing features of international financial markets as compared to national financial markets. This paper presents a simple model of the impact of these factors on banks' cross-border activities and provides empirical evidence. Our...

If the technological revolution which has taken place over the past decades has lowered information costs and if information costs increase in distance, distance should – ceteris paribus – become less important in determining international bank lending. We are using a dataset on assets and...

This paper documents producer price setting in 6 countries of the euro area: Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Belgium and Portugal. It collects evidence from available studies on each of those countries and also provides new evidence. These studies use monthly producer price data. The following...

This paper documents producer price setting in 6 countries of the euro area: Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Belgium and Portugal. It collects evidence from available studies on each of those countries and also provides new evidence. These studies use monthly producer price data. The following...

This paper provides new evidence on the foreign direct investment stocks of German firms. We use firm-level data for the years 1990-2000 to describe the regional and sectoral patterns of German FDI through gravity-type equations. We provide evidence on the patterns of FDI by sector, by size of...

The opening up of Central and Eastern Europe has provided new investment opportunities for German investors. At the same time, importing capital from abroad can be an efficient mechanism towards increased factor accumulation for the accession states to the European Union. In this paper, we study...