Unemployment influences people’s life satisfaction beyond negative income shocks. A large body of literature investigates these non-pecuniary costs of unemployment and stresses the importance of social identity and therefore social norms, especially for men. We add to this literature by...

In developing and transition economies, microlending has become an effective instrument for providing micro businesses with the necessary financial resources to launch operations. In the industrialized countries, with their highly developed banking systems, however, there has been ongoing debate...

In developing and transition economies, microlending has become an effective instrument for providing micro businesses with the necessary financial resources to launch operations. In the industrialized countries, with their highly developed banking systems, however, there has been ongoing debate...

In developing and transition economies, microlending has become an effective instrument for providing micro businesses with the necessary financial resources to launch operations. In the industrialized countries, with their highly developed banking systems, however, there has been ongoing debate...

In developing and transition economies, microlending has become an effective instrument for providing micro businesses with the necessary financial resources to launch operations. In the industrialized countries, with their highly developed banking systems, however, there has been ongoing debate...

Efficiency is considered a key factor when evaluating a bank's performance. Moreover, efficiency enhancement is an explicit policy objective in the Single Market Directive of the European Commission. But efficiency improvements may come at the expense of deteriorating bank profits and excessive...

The Scale-Efficiency version of the Efficient-Structure Hypothesis and the Structure-Conduct-Performance Hypothesis find empirical support in German banking data from 1998 to 2002. Due to the acceptance of the two hypotheses and the existence of overall economies of scale, we conclude that...

This paper suggests a motive for bank mergers that goes beyond alleged and typically unverifiable scale economies: preemtive resolution of banks' financial distress. Such "distress mergers" can be a significant motivation for mergers because they can foster reorganizations, realize...

The German financial market is often characterized as a bank-based system with strong bank-customer relationships. The corresponding notion of a housebank is closely related to the theoretical idea of relationship lending. It is the objective of this paper to provide a direct comparison between...