A key challenge for economic policy today is to make the financial system more resilient. The literature finds that high indebtedness (or: leverage), both in the financial and in the real sectors, is a danger to macroeconomic stability and growth. Moreover, the design of the corporate tax system...

In den vergangenen Jahren hat der Welthandel im Durchschnitt schwächer zugelegt als vor der globalen Finanzkrise. Gleichzeitig haben auch die deutschen Exporte an Fahrt verloren. Die Autoren untersuchen, wie sich diese Entwicklungen auf den deutschen Weltmarktanteil ausgewirkt haben und welche...

This paper investigates how the withdrawal of banks from their cross-border business impacted the borrowing costs of European firms since the crisis. We combine aggregate information on total and cross-border credit with firm-level survey data for the period 2010–2014. We find that the decline...

We analyse the first twenty years of the euro both from an economic and an institutional perspective. We find that in particular during the period since the financial crisis, convergence as measured by a variety of indicators has not improved. Design flaws in the Eurozone institutional...

Die europäische Finanz- und Schuldenkrise hat für viele kleine und mittelgroße Unternehmen (KMU) im Euroraum höhere Finanzierungskosten mit sich gebracht. Ein Grund dafür ist, dass der europäische Kreditmarkt heute stärker fragmentiert ist als zu Beginn der Krise, weil viele Banken ihr...

After the establishment of the Banking Union, the European Commission is working on measures to foster capital market deepening in Europe. Key goals for a European Capital Markets Union are to provide firms with alternative funding sources to bank credit and to make economies more resilient to...

Since the global financial crisis and the related restructuring of banking systems, bank concentration is on the rise in many countries. Consequently, bank size and its role for macroeconomic volatility (or: stability) is the subject of intense debate. This paper analyzes the effects of...

Regulatory bank levies set incentives for banks to reduce leverage. At the same time, corporate income taxation makes funding through debt more attractive. In this paper, we explore how regulatory levies affect bank capital structure, depending on corporate income taxation. Based on bank balance...