We explore the impact of large banks and of financial openness for aggregate growth. Large banks matter because of granular effects: if markets are very concentrated in terms of the size distribution of banks, idiosyncratic shocks at the bank-level do not cancel out in the aggregate but can...

Affiliates of German firms in Eastern Europe differ from those in the rest of the world. They have smaller sales and they employ more labor. Labor productivity is thus lower than in affiliates of German firms elsewhere. Moreover, multinational activity in Eastern Europe is mostly unilaterally...

In Russia, monetary stabilization has gradually been achieved since early 1995. However, the conduct of monetary policy remains a trial-and-error process. The present paper estimates a money demand function. It finds that long-run money demand has remained relatively stable, but short-run...

Has the introduction of the Euro fostered financial integration in Europe? We answer this question using a data set of banks' bilateral foreign assets and liabilities provided by the Bank for International Settlements. The data cover the pre-Euro period (1995-1998) and the post-Euro period...

International bank portfolios constitute a large component of international country portfolios. Yet, their response to macroeconomic conditions and their impact on the international transmission of business cycles developments remains largely unexplored. We use a novel dataset on banks'...

Die Währungskrise, die in den letzten Monaten Asien erschütterte, zeigte einmal mehr, wie riskant es sein kann, aufstrebende Marktwirtschaften in den internationalen Markt mit einzubeziehen. Der vorliegende Diskussionsbeitrag befaßt sich mit der Frage, ob es sinnvoll wäre, den Kapitalzufluß...

Economic theory provides two main explanations why changes in exchange rates can affect foreign direct investment (FDI). According to a first explanation, FDI reacts to exchange rate changes if there are information frictions on capital markets and if the investment by firms depends on their net...