Based on a broad set of regional aggregated and disaggregated consumer price index (CPI) data from major industrialized countries in Asia, North America and Europe we are examining the role that national borders play for goods market integration. In line with the existing literature we find that...

This paper proposes an intertemporal model of venture capital investment with screening and advising where the venture capitalists time endowment is the scarce input factor. Screening improves the selection of firms receiving finance, advising allows firms to develop a marketable product, both...

Securitization is a financial innovation that experiences a boom-bust cycle, as many other innovations before. This paper analyzes possible reasons for the breakdown of primary and secondary securitization markets, and argues that misaligned incentives along the value chain are the primary cause...

The German Retirement Saving Act instituted a new funded system of supplementary pensions coupled with a general reduction in the level of state pay-as-you-go old-age pensions. In order to qualify for tax relief, the providers of supplementary savings products must offer a guarantee of the...

The globalization of markets and companies has increased the demand for internationally comparable high quality accounting information resulting from a common set of accounting rules. Despite remarkable efforts of international harmonization for more than 25 years, accounting regulation is still...

The predictive likelihood is of particular relevance in a Bayesian setting when the purpose is to rank models in a forecast comparison exercise. This paper discusses how the predictive likelihood can be estimated for any subset of the observable variables in linear Gaussian state-space models...

Der vorliegende Aufsatz stellt die Vorgehensweise und die wichtigsten Ergebnisse einer internationalen Finanzplatzstudie vor, die im Jahre 1998 im Auftrag des Center for Financial Studies (Frankfurt am Main) durchgeführt wurde. Ziel dieser Studie war es, aus der Analyse wichtiger...

This paper analyzes the impact of blockownership dispersion on firm value. Blockholdings by multiple blockholders is a widespread phenomenon in the U.S. market. It is not clear, however, whether dispersion among blockholder is preferable to having a more concentrated ownership structure. To test...

This paper reconsiders the effect of investor sentiment on stock prices. Using survey-based sentiment indicators from Germany and the US we confirm previous findings of predictability at intermediate time horizons. The main contribution of our paper is that we also analyze the immediate price...