We study a dynamic model of monopolistic provision of commitment devices to sophisticated, Strotzian decision makers. We allow for unobservable heterogeneity at the contracting stage in the agents' preferences for commitment vs. flexibility. The first-best contracts under complete information...

"Wohn-Riester" wird in Literatur und Praxis teilweise äußerst kritisch gesehen. Es sei für die potenziellen Anwender zu kompliziert und die nachgelagerte Besteuerung stelle die Wirtschaftlichkeit in Frage. Der Autor kommt zu völlig anderen Ergebnissen: Die Komplexität ist geringer und die...

Entrepreneurship is an important driver of economic growth, job creation and competitiveness. However, the small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) sector has been severely affected by the crisis, with access to bank finance being particularly difficult. Various government-sponsored schemes have...

House prices have increased significantly in Canada over the past decade, driving household debt and residential construction activity to historical highs. Although macro-prudential tightening has slowed the pace of household borrowing in the last few years, house prices have continued to trend...

We review recent changes in monetary policy that have led to development and testing of an overnight reverse repurchase agreement (ON RRP) facility, an innovative tool for implementing monetary policy during the normalization process. Making ON RRPs available to a broad set of investors,...

Besides the introduction and the final conclusions, this Discussion Paper has four sections. The first presents the "state of art", that is, the current debate about the long-term financing of the neo-corporatist state capitalism in Brazil. Then it shows the personal and corporate wealth as...

Investment in infrastructure for increasing trade and connectivity in South Asia and Southeast Asia has been impacted by a reduction in commercial bank participation in project financing, which has significantly increased the role of multilateral financial institutions and export credit...

In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, policymakers in the United States and elsewhere have adopted stress testing as a central tool for supervising large, complex, financial institutions and promoting financial stability. Although supervisory stress testing may confer substantial...

This paper shows that politicians' pressure to climb the career ladder increases bank risk exposure in their region. Chinese local politicians are set growth targets in their region that are relative to each other. Growth is stimulated by debt-financed programs which are mainly financed via bank...

Although banks are at the center of systemic risk, there are other institutions that contribute to it. With the publication of the leveraged lending guideline in March 2013, the U.S. regulators show that they are especially worried about the private equity firms with their high-risk deals. Given...