This paper examines the role of culture in households' saving decisions. Exploiting the historical language borders within Switzerland, I isolate the effect of households' exposure to certain language groups from economic, institutional, demographic and geographic factors for a homogeneous and...

We study retail deposit withdrawals from European commercial banks which incurred investment losses in the wake of the U.S. subprime crisis. We document a strong propensity of households to withdraw deposits from distressed banks, especially when a bank receives a public bailout. However, the...

Daniel Osberghaus, ZEW – Leibniz-Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung, Mannheim, zeigt die Schwächen und die fehlende Nachhaltigkeit des derzeitigen Versicherungsmarktes für Elementarschäden auf. Nötig sei eine Neuordnung des Versicherungsmarktes für Hochwasserschäden. Zu...

We exploit a unique data set that features both un-intermediated mortgage requests and independent offers from multiple banks for each request. We show that households typically are not prudent risk managers but prioritize the minimization of current mortgage payments over the risk of possible...

This paper examines the role of culture in households' saving decisions. Exploiting the historical language borders within Switzerland, I isolate the effect of households' exposure to certain language groups from economic, institutional, demographic and geographic factors for a homogeneous and...

We study the exposure of mortgage borrowers in Switzerland to interest rate, income and house price risks and examine how the households' choice of risky mortgages is related to individual interest rate expectations and risk-aversion. Our analysis is based on a unique data set of household...