Staaten gewähren Banken oft Garantien, um den Zusammenbruch des Finanzsystems zu verhindern. Diese Garantien müssen aber sobald wie möglich wieder zurückgenommen werden. Zuvor sollten jedoch die möglichen Auswirkungen der Abschaffung einer Garantie untersucht werden. Die so gewonnenen...

Measuring and identifying financial constraints represents an important challenge in empirical studies. Due to data limitations perception-based indicators or approximations of access to finance by the usage of finance are often used, disregarding firm-specific differences in the demand for...

During the financial crisis asymmetric information in credit markets became moresevere. Did relationship banking help firms to avoid impaired credit financing andwhich credit financing problems did relationship banking help to circumvent? We usesurvey data for 1,139 German firms to analyze how...

Do Empires affect human values and behavior long after their demise? In several Eastern European countries, communities on both sides of the long-gone border of the Habsburg Empire have been sharing common formal institutions for 90 years now. We exploit this geographic discontinuity in a...

Many parts of Europe were ruled by large empires in the past. After their dissolution did these empires leave behind a legacy of governmental institutions? Sascha O. Becker, University of Warwick, Katrin Boeckh, Regensburg Eastern Europe Institute, Christa Hainz and Ludger Woessmann examine how...

In many developing and transition countries, we observe rather high levels of corruption. We argue that the missing political support for anti-corruption policies is due to a lack of economic and financial reforms. Our model is based on the fact that corrupt officials have to pay entry fees to...

In transition countries, the real impact of banking crises has so far been rather moderate. We study the effect of bank insolvency on corporate incentives in a model where incumbent banks possess an informational advantage. We find that bank insolvency reduces the incentive to restructure for...

In transition and developing countries, we observe rather high levels of corruption even they have democratic political systems. This is surprising from a political economy perspective, as a majority of the people generally suffers from high corruption levels. Our model based on the fact that...