In 2001, government guarantees for savings banks in Germany were removed following a law suit. We use this natural experiment to examine the effect of government guarantees on bank risk taking, using a large data set of matched bank/borrower information. The results suggest that banks whose...

The paper shows that mispriced deposit insurance and capital regulation were of second order importance in determining the capital structure of large U.S. and European banks during 1991 to 2004. Instead, standard cross-sectional determinants of non-financial firms’ leverage carry over to...

This study investigates whether capital structure theory can explain debt ratios in an historical environment which was characterized by poor investor protection, booming stock markets and strong banks, and in which corporate income tax did not affect capital structure. Our results, based on a...

There are mainly two types of theories explaining banking crisis, emanating from the monetarist school respectively institutional economics. Using an allegory, monetarists are discussing how much water in terms of liquidity that is needed to stop a fire escalating into a disaster, while...

We trace the relationship between firm performance and corporate governance in microfinance institutions (MFI) utilising a self constructed global data set on MFIs, collected from third-party rating agencies. We study the effect of board characteristics, ownership type, competition and...

L’importance des «petites et moyennes valeurs» s’est renforcée de manière significative au cours du dernier cycle boursier. Des initiatives se poursuivent pour renforcer l’adaptation du cadre réglementaire à cette population très spécifique.

Les conditions d’accès des PME au crédit se sont plutôt améliorées ces dernières années. Des handicaps persistent néanmoins (cherté relative des découverts bancaires, contraintes de financement propres à certains secteurs) dans un contexte financier devenu moins accommodant sur la...

La réglementation bancaire française issue de l’accord de Bâle II est globalement favorable au financement des PME puisqu’elle devrait faciliter la transparence dans les relations banque-entreprise, une offre de crédit et une tarification mieux adaptées à la spécificité de chaque...

The paper revisits the impact of uncertainty on the decision problem of a bank. The bank extends risky loans to private investors and sells deposits to savers at fixed rates. The uncertainty under which deposit/loan-portfolios are chosen by banks is endogenized through an information system that...