With this paper we seek to contribute to the literature on the relation between finance and growth. We argue that most studies in the field fail to measure the quality of financial intermediation but rather resort to using proxies on the size of financial systems. Moreover, cross-country...

We test whether output growth in European economic agglomeration regions depends on financial development. To this end we suggest a relative measure of the quality of financial institutions rather than the usual quantity proxy of financial development. In order to measure the quality of...

This paper investigates whether the new Basel Accord will induce a change in bank lending to emerging markets using a comprehensive new data set on German banks` foreign exposure. We test two interlinked hypotheses on the conditions under which the change in the regulatory capital would leave...

After the German reunification, interregional subsidies accounted for approximately four percent of gross fixed capital investment in the new federal states. We show that between 1992 and 2005 infrastructure and (small) business aid had a negative net impact on regional economic growth. This...

Political risk represents an important hidden transaction cost that reduces international trade. This paper investigates the claim that German public export credit guarantees (Hermes guarantees) mitigate this friction to trade flows and hence promote exports. We employ an empirical trade gravity...

This article revisits the 2 × 2 penalty kick game and seeks to explain differences in mixed strategies associated with different player types and the relative performance of these player types. The authors show that (a) a kicker’s general ability is a reliable indicator of his success rate,...

The extensive public support measures for the financial sector were key for the management of the financial crisis. This paper gives a detailed description of the measures taken by governments during the period 2008–2010 and attempts a preliminary assessment of the effectiveness of such...