The rise of a crisis-prone banking sector and its political power has received significant attention following the most recent financial crisis. The crisis sparked a growing interest in understanding how and why we have created a world of large, unstable banks. Excessive banking activity arose...

This study was prepared by Nadine Fabritz while she was working at the Ifo Institute for Economic Research in the Department for Human Capital and Innovation. It was completed in June 2014 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich in October...

This thesis was written by Christian Beermann while he was a research assistant at the Center for Economic Studies (CES) at the University of Munich. It was completed in December 2014 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich in May 2015. The...