We decompose the change in banks' net interest margin into a change in market-wide bank rates and a change in the balance-sheet composition. Our empirical findings from a detailed data set on German banks' balance-sheet positions, broken down into different maturities, creditors and borrowers...

We decompose the change in banks’ net interest margin into a change in market-wide bank rates and a change in balance-sheet composition. The usefulness of this decomposition is illustrated for a detailed data set of German bank balance sheets, broken down into different maturities, creditors...

Developments in risk-transfer instruments and risk management techniques in the last two decades have fundamentally changed how banks manage their assets and liabilities. In this document we show that, for all three sectors of German universal banks (private commercial banks, savings banks, and...

We study the link between underpricing of initial public offerings (IPOs) and index excess returns in secondary markets. We use a theoretical model to argue that underpricing of IPOs raises investors’ attention and, thereby, triggers investments in secondary markets. Our theoretical model...

Changes in foreign asset holdings are one channel through which agents adjust to macroeconomic shocks. In this paper, we test whether foreign bank assets change as a result of domestic and foreign macroeconomic shocks. We frame our empirical analysis in a standard new open economy macro model in...

We study return predictability of stock indexes of blue chip firms and smaller hightechnology firms in Germany, France, and the United Kingdom during the second half of the 1990s. We measure return predictability in terms of first-order autocorrelation coefficients, and find evidence for return...

This study investigates the development of income-decreasing discretionary expenses surrounding CEO turnovers at banks. We expect incoming CEOs to take an earnings bath during the initial stage of their tenure. For a sample of German banks over the period 1993-2012, we document that (1) incoming...

Existing research documents that incoming CEOs in non-financial firms tend to take an “earnings bath”. They reduce their first year’s profits through discretionary expenses, blame the “bad outcome” on their predecessors, lower the performance benchmark, and save income for subsequent...

We used a recursive modeling approach to study whether investors, in real time could, have used information on the comovement of stock markets to forecast stock returns in European stock markets for high-technology firms. We analyzed weekly data on returns in the Neuer Markt, the Nouveau...

For their short-term payment obligations, savings banks hold substantially more liquid assets than the liquidity regulation requires. This paper investigates whether sight deposits, an important funding source for savings banks, help in explaining liquid asset holdings in excess of regulatory...