Summary Exchange rates have been found to be more volatile than underlying macroeconomic fundamentals. Researchers have argued that the empirically observed high exchange-rate volatility may result from herd behavior of foreign-exchange traders and forecasters. We sketch a standard model that...

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the impact of corporate governance, as measured by the Corporate Governance Index, on firm performance and dividend payouts during the financial crisis of 2008. Design/methodology/approach The empirical approach followed in the study involved constructing a...

Summary The paper examines the relationship between central bank interventions in the dollar-deutschmark market and the profitability of technical trading for the period 1979-1992. While previous work on this topic focused on the interventions of the Fed, we include data on Bundesbank...

Summary We use oil price forecasts from the Consensus Economic Forecast poll for the time period Oct. 1989 - Dec. 2008 to analyze how forecasters form their expectations. Our findings indicate that the extrapolative as well as the regressive expectation formation hypothesis play a role. Standard...

Abstract In the context of the discussion of the new financial architecture the idea of a Tobin tax is revived. Mainly due to the pressure of several non-governmental organisations (NGO’s) the Tobin tax is currently discussed seriously in various policy circles. Recently, the German Federal...

Abstract Due to changes in the German Corporate Governance Code the transparency of compensation of the members of the management board has become a central element of the German corporate governance system. We analyze how the new transparency will influence the average compensation level. It...

Abstract We analyze the law regarding the adequacy of executive directors’ compensation in Germany. First we provide an overview of the law’s contents clustered in four different fields. We also introduce economic theories to analyze the principal-agent relationship with one principal...

Abstract In this paper, we present two models in which the introduction of a “lender of the last resort” significantly affects the banking sector. In the first model, the introduction is stabilizing. However, in the second model it is destabilizing. Both models are very well suited to...

Summary The paper uses German annual data covering the period 1969-2000 to present evidence on the link between aggregate inflation and the skewness of the distribution of relative price changes. Our empirical results are mixed. Our regression-based analyses suggest that the skewness of the...

Abstract Economists use three types of models to describe volunteer labour supply: the public-goods model, the private-consumption model, and the human-capital model. We used data from an online survey questionnaire of volunteers working for the German Red Cross to study the extent to which...