Generally, information provision and certification have been identified as the major economic functions of rating agencies. This paper analyzes whether the "watchlist" (rating review) instrument has extended the agencies' role towards a monitoring position, as proposed by Boot, Milbourn, and...

The work report first describes the current developments on the German market for nonperforming loans, which after its peak in spring 2007 is now also affected by the financial crisis. The sale of small and medium-size portfolios is described within the scope of a case study. Furthermore, the...

Private equity has seen an impressive activity surge in Germany over the last ten years. This working paper meets the increasing thirst for information on the German buyout market with an overview of its historic development, a quantitative analysis of its performance and a future outlook. While...

This paper studies 'Stylised Facts' and 'Determinants' of short-and long-term CDS-spreads of banks. As short-term spreads we choose 6M-, as long-term spreads we choose 5Y-spreads. In the section 'Stylised Facts' we found that the correlation between short-and long-term spreads for the total...

The "Easterlin paradox" suggests that there is no link between a society's economic development and its average level of happiness. We re-assess this paradox analyzing multiple rich datasets spanning many decades. Using recent data on a broader array of countries, we establish a clear positive...

Science rests upon the reliability of peer review. This paper suggests a way to test for bias. It is able to avoid the fallacy - one seen in the popular press and the research literature - that to measure discrimination it is sufficient to study averages within two populations. The paper's...

This paper employs cross-sectional data from 100 countries to analyze the main determinants of inter-country Internet diffusion rates. We set up an empirical model based on strong theoretical foundations, in which we regress Internet usage on variables that capture social, economic and political...

Innovations in the finance industry are an important tool to enhance profitability and to increase a nation's wealth. It, therefore, is not astonishing that there is much empirical work on innovations in finance. Most of the work however is concerned with the design of innovative products. The...