Economic enterprises face two, related, managerial problems: effective management of the enterprise's activities, and communicating to outsiders that the enterprise is in fact well-run. These problems were especially difficult in the credit cooperative movement that grew up in Germany in the...

Research on 'trust' now forms a prominent part of the research agenda in history and the social sciences. Although this research has generated useful insights, the idea of trust has been used so widely and loosely that it risks creating more confusion than clarity. This essay argues that to the...

Motivated by the recent discussion of the declining importance of deposits as banks' major source of funding we investigate which factors determine funding costs at local banks. Using a panel data set of more than 800 German local savings and cooperative banks for the period from 1998 to 2004 we...

Do private banks act as hard-nosed bankers when firms get financially distressed compared to public banks that have the mandate to support regional economy? For German firms in the period 2000-2005, I find that the probability of leaving the market after financial distress is higher for firms...

Genossenschaftliche Unternehmen zeichnen sich durch ein spezielles Ge-schäftsmodell und durch besondere Governancestrukturen aus, die sie von anderen Organisations- und Rechtsformen unterscheiden. Dies gilt auch für die Genossenschaftsbanken. Insbesondere ist ihnen eine strikte Orientie-rung...

Fusionen von Genossenschaftsbanken haben in den vergangenen Jahren im genossenschaftlichen Finanzverbund große Bedeutung erlangt. Dies wird von den beiden IfG-Mitarbeitern Dirk Lamprecht und Christian Strothmann zum Anlass genommen, sich grundsätzlich mit den Bewertungsmethoden bei...