Most previous research on efficiency in banking takes a regulatory perspective. In contrast,this paper investigates the empirical relation between efficiency and profitability in five largeeconomies of the European Union during the period 1998-2005 and discusses the results fromthe perspective...

In his comprehensive critique of current economic approaches to social capital, Durlauf(2002) recommends a stronger reliance on methods of experimental economics and socialpsychology. This paper surveys different notions of social capital and submits an alternativeconceptual approach based on...

Neuroeconomics stays in the center of the ongoing naturalistic turn in economics. It portraysthe individual as a complex system of decision making mechanisms and modules. This resultsinto a conceptual tension with the standard economic notion of the unity of the actor that is asystemic property...

Despite the common view that there is inherently a relationship of confliction, it is now impossibleto imagine the financing of family-owned enterprises in Germany without the alternativemethod of Private Equity financing. Based on a survey on Private Equity in familyowned companies specialising...

This paper examines the financing structure of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) inGermany and questions whether an equity gap – or, more generally, a financing gap - exists.Reviewing the literature and available data sources, we find that financing constraints seem toaffect, if at...

Economics is increasingly adopting the methodological standards and procedures of the naturalsciences. The paper analyzes this ‘naturalistic turn’ from the philosophical perspective onnaturalism, and I discuss the implications for the field of finance. The theory of finance is aninteresting...

This article analyses the recent Leica judgement of the Higher Regional Court Frankfurt/Mainand its consequences. In this judgement, the court has established an infringement of specialformal requirements with respect to Leica´s invitation to the Annual General Meeting which,if correct, would...

Since summer 2007 the Subprime credit crisis has been affecting the international financialmarkets. One of the consequences of the crisis was the collapse of the market for large-sizedleveraged buyout transactions in late 2007 and early 2008.The goal of this Working Paper is to examine to what...

In 2004 the Basel Committee published an extensive revision of the capital charges whichcreates more risk sensitive capital requirements for banks. The New Accord called “InternationalConvergence of Capital Measurement and Capital Standard” provides in its first pillarfor a finer measurement...

This report analyses the possibility to outflank disclosure obligations under the German SecuritiesTrading Act as well as the German Takeover Act by using derivative instruments in thecontext of the attack of Schaeffler KG on Continental AG.Irrespective of a limited knowledge of the complete...