The huge amount of white elephants in East Germany suggests the search for a statistical figure for an "efficient" level of investment. Following the Mankiw/Romer/Weil (1992) augmented Solow model and the studies of Borensztein/Montiel (1992) and Thimann (1996) and applying the results of a...

Some specific features of banking products (they are abstract, time-related, immaterial, in need of explanation, legally standardized, imitable, and require a minimum of trust) make their marketing quite challenging. Good branding seems to be a solution to this problem. There is a lot of...

Extremely affluent investors differ in a number of ways. In industrialized countries the average age of UHNWI is rather high, their wealth is frequently inherited and the investment style if more conservative. In contrast, UHNWI in emerging markets are comparatively young, they have created...

For the past ten years the politicians have been advocating private pension plans and pushing a new system embodied in a range of models, e.g. pensions for the self-employed, for employees, as well as company pension plans. In such cases, the contributions are put into personal accounts and...

German credit institutions have the duty of banking confi dentiality, i.e. they are obliged not to divulge their clients’ credit and fi nancial circumstances and to deny queries in general. Banking confi dentiality is not specifi cally regulated by law, but the prevalent view is that banking...

Nach den Urteilen von US-Gerichten zugunsten der beiden Hedgefonds Aurelius und NML Capital, die das Land auf volle Entschädigung ihrer Anleihen verklagt haben, steht Argentinien erneut vor einer möglichen Insolvenz. Für Christian Tietje, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, gelten...

The market for ratings suffers from several inefficiencies: asymmetric information and moral hazard lead to conflicts of interest and principal-agent-problems. Moreover, network externalities and economies of scale lead to a lack of competition in the market for ratings. There is empirical...

Der Faktor Zeit spielt in der ökonomischen Theorie eine wichtige Rolle - intertemporale Entscheidungen sind in allen Bereichen der Wirtschaftstheorie und -politik relevant. In der überwiegenden Zahl der Fälle stützt man sich dabei auf das sogenannte Discounted-utility-Modell (DU-Modell), in...

The German system of public broadcasting has arrived at a crisis point: too many lightweight channels, too many soap operas and boulevard magazines, too little on culture and too much on celebrity. Wasted investments, product placements, misappropriation of funds and fraud led to public...