Seit 1994 erlebt der deutsche Bankenmarkt eine Welle von Direktbankgründungen. Die Direktbankinnovation ist durch Entwicklungen auf der Angebots- und Nachfrageseite erklärbar. Einerseits ist sie in einer Periode zunehmenden Kostenwettbewerbs durch Weiterentwicklung der...

Since 1994, the German banking market is confronted with an entry wave of direct banks. This banking innovation may be explained by developments on the supply side as well as on the demand side. It is pushed by developments in telecommunication technologies during a period of rising cost...

Switzerland is one of the countries with the highest concentration of bank-customer relationships. The present paper seeks to find out whether this can be explained by the structure of Swiss firms or by the organization of the Swiss banking market. Using survey data from small and medium-sized...

Adopting a continuous-time portfolio framework with endogenous financial intermediation, this paper analyzes diversification in bank lending. First, an increase in the number of independent credits in a loan portfolio is shown to enhance intermediation activities. This supports the hypothesis of...

This paper examines the influence of environmental factors on the technical and revenue efficiency of German savings banks. It employs a two-step approach, using, first, data envelopment analysis to calculate efficiency and, second, multivariate regressions to examine the influence of regional...

This paper examines the influence of environmental factors on technical, cost, scale and revenue efficiency of German savings banks in 2001-2005. Taking into account growing regional disparities in economic wealth and population size, it differentiates between declining and growing regions....

An overview of previous evidence about relationship banking to SMEs shows that multiple banking relationships prevail even at small firms, but there is hardly evidence on the number of banking relationships held by micro firms. To close this gap, we use data from a survey conducted among...

This paper examines the composition of supervisory boards of German banks for a sample of 41 large banks in the period 1999-2006. We find that the supervisory board structure reflects both outside control by shareholders and inside control by stakeholders. Most of the non-employee board members...

This is the first attempt to test hypotheses about financial constraints of ethnic minority owned businesses in Germany. Using data from a survey among 3,000 ethnic and native entrepreneurs, we examine differences in the financing patterns between both demographic groups. We find that...

Aufgrund der starken regionalen Verankerung kann bei den Sparkassen ein besonderes Interesse an den Folgen des demographischen Wandels und speziell von Alterung und Abwanderung vermutet werden. Dabei sind die Sparkassen nicht nur über das Regionalprinzip eng mit einer bestimmten Region...