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 stochastic frontier analysis (Aigner et al., 1977, Meeusen and van de Broeck, 1977) is widely used to estimate individual efficiency scores. The basic idea lies in the introduction of an additive error term consisting of a noise and an inefficiency term. Most often the assumption of a...

In this paper we stress-test credit portfolios of 28 German banks based on a Mertontype multi-factor credit risk model. The ad-hoc stress scenario is an economic downturn in the automobile industry that constitutes an exceptional but plausible event suggested by historical data. Rather than on a...

The Italian and German banking systems shared similar characteristics early in the 1990s but have evolved in different directions since then: Italy privatized its publicly-owned banks while Germany has maintained a large share of state-owned savings banks. Contemporaneously, banks in both...

Developments in risk-transfer instruments and risk management techniques in the last two decades have fundamentally changed how banks manage their assets and liabilities. In this document we show that, for all three sectors of German universal banks (private commercial banks, savings banks, and...

After decades of steady liberalisation and financial market development, emerging capital markets experienced unparalleled capital inflows in the aftermath of the emerging markets crisis in the 1990s. This paper studies portfolio investment decisions of German banks in 30 emerging capital...