This paper is a draft for the chapter German banks and banking structure of the forthcoming book The German financial system edited by J.P. Krahnen and R.H. Schmidt (Oxford University Press). As such, the paper starts out with a description of past and present structural features of the German...

We show that multi-bank loan pools improve the risk-return profile of banks ̕loan business. Banks write simple contracts on the proceeds from pooled loan portfolios, taking into account the free-rider problems in joint loan production. Thus, banks benefit greatly from diversifying credit risk...

Previous studies document a relationship between gambling at the aggregate level and investments in securities with lottery-like features. We combine data on individual gambling consumption with portfolio holdings and trading records to examine whether gambling and trading act as substitutes or...

We study a conflict of interest faced by universal banks that conduct proprietary trading alongside their retail banking services. Our dataset contains the stock holdings of each and every German bank and of their corresponding retail clients. We investigate (i) whether banks deliberately push...

We merge administrative information from a large German discount brokerage firm with regional data to examine if financial advisors improve portfolio performance. Our data track accounts of 32,751 randomly selected individual customers over 66 months and allow direct comparison of performance...