Das Buch gibt einen umfassenden Einblick in die Vertragstheorie vor dem Hintergrund finanzwirtschaftlicher Entscheidungen. Die Analyse der typischen vertragstheoretischen Probleme des Moral Hazard, der Adverse Selection und des Signalling sowie aktueller Forschungsfragen zur Theorie der Firma...

Since summer 2007 the Subprime credit crisis has been affecting the international financial markets. One of the consequences of the crisis was the collapse of the market for large-sized leveraged buyout transactions in late 2007 and early 2008. The goal of this Working Paper is to examine to...

Credit rating agencies do not only disclose simple ratings but announce watchlists (rating reviews) and outlooks as well. This paper analyzes the economic function underlying the review procedure. Using Moody's rating data between 1982 and 2004, we find that for borrowers of high...

Empirical and experimental papers find that high-powered incentives may reduce performance rather than improve it; a phenomenon referred to as "choking under pressure". We show that competition for high ability workers nevertheless leads firms to offer high bonus payments, thereby deliberately...

Based on German data between 1999 and 2007, we analyze the growth factors of SMEs and contrast them with those of large firms. Differences show up both in balance sheet and employment growth. While we confirm earlier results on inherent growth structures and the influence of firm age, we derive...

This study examines the role of actual and perceived financial sophistication (i.e., financial literacy and confidence) for individuals' wealth accumulation. Using survey data from the German SAVE initiative, we find strong gender- and education-related differences in the distribution of the two...

We examine firms' simultaneous choice of investment, debt financing and liquidity in a large sample of US corporates between 1980 and 2014. We partition the sample according to the firms' financial constraints and their needs to hedge against future shortfalls in operating income. In contrast to...