We claim that we currently live in a banking regulatory bubble.We review how: i) banking intermediation theory hinges on dealing with borrower-lender asymmetry of information; ii) instead, the presence of complete information is keystone of finance theory. Next, we document how finance theory...

We claim that we currently live in a banking regulatory bubble. We review how: i) banking intermediation theory hinges on dealing with borrower-lender asymmetry of information; ii) instead, the presence of complete information is the keystone of the finance theory. Next, we document how finance...

Due to opaque information and weak enforcement in emerging loan markets, the need for collateral is high, whereas borrowers lack adequate assets to pledge as collateral. How is this puzzle solved? We find for a representative sample from Northeast Thailand that indeed most loans do not include...

This paper investigates the performance of Germany’s three-pillar banking system in providing financial services nationwide, regarding different outreach indicators. At the federal state level, bank outreach shows South-North and West-East gaps. Combining regional and bank data at the district...

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...

The macroprudential regulatory framework of Basel III imposes the same minimum capital and liquidity requirements on all banks around the world to ensure global competitiveness of banks. Using an agent-based model of the financial system, we find that this is not a robust framework to achieve...

Due to opaque information and weak enforcement in emerging loan markets, the need for collateral is high, whereas borrowers lack adequate assets to pledge as collateral. How is this puzzle solved? We find for a representative sample from Northeast Thailand that indeed most loans do not include...

The ex ante theory of collateral states that better informed lenders, such as informal lenders, rely less on collateral. We test this by contrasting the use of collateral between formal and informal lenders in the same market. Indeed, formal lenders rely more often on collateral, controlling for...

The present paper investigates the number of bank relationships of small and medium-sized enterprises in Switzerland using survey data from 1996 and 2002. We differentiate between overall bank relationships and lending relationships and disaggregate the loan market with respect to firm sizes,...

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...