Studies employing micro price data to examine the extent of international goods market integration tend to find that borders induce arbitrage-impeding transaction costs which contribute to segment national markets. Analyzing household scanner price data from the three euro area countries...

Studies employing micro price data to examine the extent of international goods market integration tend to find that borders imply arbitrage-impeding transaction costs, inducing market segmentation. Within monetary unions, these effects are found to be very minor though, at least when online...

This paper examines how capital is determined by German banks. We analyse whether the determinants found in the previous empirical literature hold for the special German banking sector with its three characteristic banking groups of savings banks, cooperative banks and other banks. On the basis...

The savings banks? decision to distribute profits among their public owners is strongly regulated by law in order to guarantee their adequate funding via retained profits. However, the legal scope is reluctantly exhausted. In this study we examine the determinants of the savings banks? payout...