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Aus Anlass des Fernseh-Sendebeginns in West- und Ostdeutschland vor 50 Jahren fand im Hans-Bredow-Institut in Hamburg am 5. und 6. Dezember 2002 ein Symposion unter dem Titel "Fernsehgeschichte als Zeitgeschichte - Zeitgeschichte als Fernsehgeschichte" statt. In einem kritischen Beitrag untersuchte Peter Zimmermann vor allem die "Feindbildkonstruktionen" des westlichen Fernsehens, die sich nach Aufffassung des Referenten auch bis nach dem Fall der Mauer nachweisen lassen. Zimmermann: "Im freudetrunkenen Monat November des Jahres 1989 schien das deutsche Wintermärchen mit dem Fall der Mauer endlich ein glückliches Ende zu finden. Ganz ungetrübt verlief die Wiedervereinigung der 'deutschen Brüder und Schwestern' allerdings auch in medialer Hinsicht nicht. Mit der sogenannten Abwicklung des DDR-Fernsehens und der DEFA übernahm das Fernsehen der Bundesrepublik auch die ostdeutsche 'Bilderhoheit'. Die in Film und Fernsehen der DDR bislang dominanten positiven Selbstbilder wurden fortan durch die im Westen dominierenden negativen Fremdbilder ersetzt. Es ist daher wenig verwunderlich, dass seit der Wiedervereinigung in den Fernsehdokumentationen zur deutschen Geschichte fast ausnahmslos der westdeutsche Blick dominiert und die Geschichte der DDR marginalisiert, abgewertet oder karikiert wird."
Inflation-targeting central banks have only imperfect knowledge about the effect of policy decisions on inflation. An important source of uncertainty is the relationship between inflation and unemployment. This paper studies the optimal monetary policy in the presence of uncertainty about the natural unemployment rate, the short-run inflation-unemployment tradeoff and the degree of inflation persistence in a simple macroeconomic model, which incorporates rational learning by the central bank as well as private sector agents. Two conflicting motives drive the optimal policy. In the static version of the model, uncertainty provides a motive for the policymaker to move more cautiously than she would if she knew the true parameters. In the dynamic version, uncertainty also motivates an element of experimentation in policy. I find that the optimal policy that balances the cautionary and activist motives typically exhibits gradualism, that is, it still remains less aggressive than a policy that disregards parameter uncertainty. Exceptions occur when uncertainty is very high and in inflation close to target.
With the Council regulation (EC) No. 1346/2000 of 29 May 2000 on insolvency proceedings, that came into effect May 31, 2002 the European Union has introduced a legal framework for dealing with cross-border insolvency proceedings. In order to achieve the aim of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of insolvency proceedings having cross-border effects within the European Community, the provisions on jurisdiction, recognition and applicable law in this area are contained in a Regulation, a Community law measure which is binding and directly applicable in Member States. The goals of the Regulation, with 47 articles, are to enable cross-border insolvency proceedings to operate efficiently and effectively, to provide for co-ordination of the measures to be taken with regard to the debtor’s assets and to avoid forum shopping. The Insolvency Regulation, therefore, provides rules for the international jurisdiction of a court in a Member State for the opening of insolvency proceedings, the (automatic) recognition of these proceedings in other Member States and the powers of the ‘liquidator’ in the other Member States. The Regulation also deals with important choice of law (or: private international law) provisions. The Regulation is directly applicable in the Member States3 for all insolvency proceedings opened after 31 May 2002.
We use consumer price data for 205 cities/regions in 21 countries to study PPP deviations before, during and after the major currency crises of the 1990s. We combine data from industrialized nations in North America (Unites States, Canada and Mexico), Europe (Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal), Asia (Japan and South Korea), and Oceania (Australia and New Zealand) with corresponding data from emerging market economies in South America (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Columbia) and Asia (India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand). By doing so, we confirm previous results that both distance and border explain a significant amount of relative price variation across different locations. We also find that currency attacks had major disintegration effects by considerably increasing these border effects and by raising within-country relative price dispersion in emerging market economies. These effects are found to be quite persistent since relative price volatility across emerging markets today is still significantly larger than a decade ago.
We use consumer price data for 81 European cities (in Germany, Austria, Finland, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Switzerland) to study the impact of the introduction of the euro on goods market integration. Employing both aggregated and disaggregated consumer price index (CPI) data we confirm previous results which showed that the distance between European cities explains a significant amount of the variation in the prices of similar goods in different locations. We also find that the variation of relative prices is much higher for two cities located in different countries than for two equidistant cities in the same country. Under the EMU, the elimination of nominal exchange rate volatility has largely reduced these border effects, but distance and border still matter for intra-European relative price volatility.
Using a unique, hand-collected database of all venture-backed firms listed on Germany´s Neuer Markt, we analyze the history of venture capital financing of these firms before the IPO and the behavior of venture capitalists at the IPO. We can detect significant differences in the behavior and characteristics of German vs. foreign venture capital firms. The discrepancy in the investment and divestment strategies may be explained by the grandstanding phenomenon, the value-added hypothesis and certification issues. German venture capitalists are typically younger and smaller than their counterparts from abroad. They syndicate less. The sectoral structure of their portfolios differs from that of foreign venture capital firms. We also find that German venture capitalists typically take companies with lower offering volumes on the market. They usually finance firms in a later stage, carry through fewer investment rounds and take their portfolio firms public earlier. In companies where a German firm is the lead venture capitalist, the fraction of equity held by the group of venture capitalists is lower, their selling intensity at the IPO is higher and the committed lock-up period is longer.
We analyze the venture capitalist´s decision on the timing of the IPO, the offer price and the fraction of shares he sells in the course of the IPO. A venture capitalist may decide to take a company public or to liquidate it after one or two financing periods. A longer venture capitalist´s participation in a firm (later IPO) may increase its value while also increasing costs for the venture capitalist. Due to his active involvement, the venture capitalist knows the type of firm and the kind of project he finances before potential new investors do. This information asymmetry is resolved at the end of the second period. Under certain assumptions about the parameters and the structure of the model, we obtain a single equilibrium in which high-quality firms separate from low-quality firms. The latter are liquidated after the first period, while the former go public either after having been financed by the venture capitalist for two periods or after one financing period using a lock-up. Whether a strategy of one or two financing periods is chosen depends on the consulting intensity of the project and / or on the experience of the venture capitalist. In the separating equilibrium, the offer price corresponds to the true value of the firm. An earlier version of this paper appeared as: The Decision of Venture Capitalists on Timing and Extent of IPOs (ZEW Discussion Paper No. 03-12). This version July 2003.
This paper analyses the long-term effects of improved small-scale lending, often provided by microfinance institutions set up with the support of development aid. The analysis shows that some common assumptions about microfinance are not true at all: First, it shows that the impact on income will accrue not to the microenterprises themselves, but rather to the consumers of their products. Second, microfinance will have a significant positive effect on the wage levels of employees in the informal sector. Third, microfinance will cause high growth rates in the informal production sector, whereas the trade sector will either contract or at best grow very little.
The theoretical derivation of credit market segmentation as the result of a free market process
(2003)
Information asymmetries make it difficult for banks to assess accurately whether specific entrepreneurs are able and/or willing to repay their loans. This leads to implicit interest rate ceilings, i.e. banks "refuse" to increase their interest rates beyond this ceiling as this would lower their net returns. Although the maximum interest rate increases as the size of enterprises decreases, such ceilings nonetheless constrain the banks’ ability to set interest rates at a level that would enable them to cover costs. If transaction costs are high, the total costs associated with granting small and medium-sized loans will exceed the maximum average return which the banks can earn by issuing such loans. For this reason, banks do not lend to small and medium-sized enterprises, and, as a consequence, these businesses have no access to formal sector loans. Because micro and small enterprises have a very high RoI, it is worthwhile for them to rely on expensive informal loans to finance their operations, at least until they reach a certain size. Once they have reached this size, however, it does not make economic sense for them to continue taking out informal credits, and thus they face a growth constraint imposed by the credit market. Medium-sized enterprises earn a lower RoI than small ones, which is why borrowing in the informal credit market is not a worthwhile option for them. Moreover, they do not have access to credit from formal financial institutions, and are thus excluded from obtaining any kind of financing in either of the two credit markets. As the result of free, unregulated market forces we get a stable equilibrium in which the credit market is segmented into an informal (small loan) segment, a formal (large loan) segment and, in between, a "non-market" (medium loan) segment.
The German financial system is the archetype of a bank-dominated system. This implies that organized equity markets are, in some sense, underdeveloped. The purpose of this paper is, first, to describe the German equity markets and, second, to analyze whether it is underdeveloped in any meaningful sense. In the descriptive part we provide a detailed account of the microstructure of the German equity markets, putting special emphasis on recent developments. When comparing the German market with its peers, we find that it is indeed underdeveloped with respect to market capitalization. In terms of liquidity, on the other hand, the German equity market is not generally underdeveloped. It does, however, lack a liquid market for block trading. Klassifikation: G 51 . Revised version forthcoming in "The German Financial System", edited by Jan P. Krahnen and Reinhard H. Schmidt, Oxford University Press.
1. Die Vorschrift des § 18 Abs. 2 WpÜG ist gegen den zu weit geratenen Wortlaut unter Berücksichtigung des Regelungszwecks einschränkend dahin auszulegen, dass ein Angebot mit einem Widerrufs- oder Rücktrittsvorbehalt versehen werden kann, sofern der Bieter oder ihm nach § 18 Abs. 1 WpÜG zuzurechnende Personen oder Unternehmen den Eintritt des Widerrufs- oder Rücktrittsgrunds nicht ausschließlich selbst herbeiführen können. 2. Eine Entscheidung zur Abgabe eines Angebots i.S. des § 10 Abs. 1 Satz 1 WpÜG ist gegeben, wenn die Entscheidung nur noch von Umständen abhängt, deren Eintritt der Bieter oder ihm nach § 18 Abs. 1 WpÜG zuzurechnende Personen oder Unternehmen nicht ausschließlich selbst herbeiführen können, die also nicht aus dem Herrschaftsbereich des Bieters stammen. 3. Der Bieter kann die Entscheidung zur Abgabe eines Angebots analog § 18 Abs. 2 WpÜG ebenso wie ein Angebot unter einen Widerrufs- oder Rücktrittsvorbehalt stellen, sofern der Bieter oder ihm nach § 18 Abs. 1 WpÜG zuzurechnende Personen oder Unternehmen den Eintritt des Widerrufs- oder Rücktrittsgrunds nicht ausschließlich selbst herbeiführen können. Zulässig ist analog §§ 18 Abs. 1, 25 WpÜG zudem ein auf die Zustimmung der Gesellschafterversammlung des Bieters bezogener Vorbehalt. Darüber hinaus darf der Bieter eine Angebotsankündigung mit einem Finanzierungsvorbehalt für den Fall versehen, dass die Gesellschafterversammlung nicht vor Veröffentlichung der Angebotsunterlage einer für die Finanzierung des Angebots erforderlichen Kapitalmaßnahme zustimmt. 4. Der Widerruf der Entscheidung zur Abgabe eines Angebots ist als actus contrarius zu der Angebotsankündigung erst mit Veröffentlichung analog § 10 Abs. 3 Satz 1 WpÜG beachtlich. 5. Mit ordnungsgemäß veröffentlichtem Widerruf der Entscheidung wird der Bieter von der Pflicht zur Übermittlung einer Angebotsunterlage an die BaFin (§ 14 Abs. 1 Satz 1 WpÜG) sowie zur Veröffentlichung einer Angebotsunterlage (§ 14 Abs. 2 Satz 1 WpÜG) frei. Eine Untersagung des Angebots gemäß § 15 Abs. 1 Nr. 3 oder 4 WpÜG kommt damit nicht mehr in Betracht. Darüber hinaus stellt die Nichtübermittlung oder Nichtveröffentlichung der Angebotsunterlage in diesem 15 Fall keine Ordnungswidrigkeit gemäß § 60 Abs. 1 Nr. 1 a) oder Nr. 2 a) WpÜG dar.
Mord-Geschichten
(2003)
Increasingly, alternative investments via hedge funds are gaining importance in Germany. Just recently, this subject was taken up in the legal literature, too; this resulted in a higher product transparency. However, German investment law and, particularly, the special division "hedge funds" is still a field dominated by practitioners. First, the present situation shall be outlined. In addition, a description of the current development is given, in which the practical knowledge of the author is included. Finally, the hedge fund regulation intended by the legislator at the beginning of the year 2004 is legally evaluated against this background.
Efficient systems for the securities transaction industry : a framework for the European Union
(2003)
This paper provides a framework for the securities transaction industry in the EU to understand the functions performed, the institutions involved and the parameters concerned that shape market and ownership structure. Of particular interest are microeconomic incentives of the industry players that can be in contradiction to social welfare. We evaluate the three functions and the strategic parameters - the boundary decision, the communication standard employed and the governance implemented - along the lines of three efficiency concepts. By structuring the main factors that influence these concepts and by describing the underlying trade-offs among them, we provide insight into a highly complex industry. Applying our framework, the paper describes and analyzes three consistent systems for the securities transaction industry. We point out that one of the systems, denoted as 'contestable monopolies', demonstrates a superior overall efficiency while it might be the most sensitive in terms of configuration accuracy and thus difficult to achieve and sustain.
Die Begrenzung der Beteiligungen von Einlagenkreditinstituten an Unternehmen außerhalb des Finanzsektors nach § 12 Abs. 1 KWG ist mit der Einführung des Begriffs der qualifizierten Beteiligung (§ 1 Abs. 15 KWG) durch das Vierte Finanzmarktförderungsgesetz1 neu geregelt worden, nachdem § 12 KWG bereits zuvor im Rahmen der 6. KWG-Novelle2 gänzlich umgestaltet wurde3. Bislang knüpfte die bankaufsichtsrechtliche Reglementierung von Unternehmensbeteiligungen an den Begriff der bedeutenden Beteiligung im Sinne von § 1 Abs. 9 KWG an. Da dieser Begriff zugleich Anknüpfungspunkt für die Regeln über die Anteilseignerkontrolle gemäß § 2b KWG ist und beiden Regelungsbereichen ein unterschiedlicher Normzweck zugrunde liegt, hat es der Gesetzgeber aus Gründen der Rechtsklarheit für erforderlich gehalten, den Begriff der qualifizierten Beteiligung einzuführen, um nicht völlig unterschiedliche Sachverhalte mit dem gleichen juristischen Term zu besetzen 4. § 2b KWG dient dazu, die an Instituten tatsächlich bestehenden Machtverhältnisse offenzulegen, um es der Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht (BaFin) zu ermöglichen, etwaige Gefahren für die Funktionsfähigkeit von Instituten rechtzeitig abzuwehren5. Demgegenüber sollen durch die Begrenzung von Beteiligungen nach § 12 Abs. 1 und 2 KWG in erster Linie Ansteckungsrisiken reduziert werden6. Beteiligungen können die Solidität des beteiligten Unternehmens in Gefahr bringen, wenn das Beteiligungsunternehmen in finanzielle Schwierigkeiten gerät oder sogar insolvent wird. Für Einlagenkreditinstitute ist die Gefahr einer beteiligungsbedingten Ansteckung besonders hoch, da sie ihre Aktiva durch die Hereinnahme von Einlagen überwiegend fremd finanzieren7. Die bankaufsichtsrechtliche Beteiligungsreglementierung verdient vor dem Hintergrund ihrer neuen Fassung eine nähere Überprüfung. Bei der Untersuchung wird insbesondere der für die Begrenzung von Beteiligungen zentrale Begriff der qualifizierten Beteiligung nach 1 Abs. 15 KWG analysiert (dazu III.). Darüber hinaus werden die sonstigen Tatbestandsmerkmale des § 12 Abs. 1 KWG (dazu II. und IV.) sowie die Folgen der Überschreitung vorgegebener Beteiligungsbegrenzungen erörtert (dazu V.). Eine Beurteilung der Regulierung von Unternehmensbeteiligungen nach § 12 Abs. 1 KWG rundet den Beitrag ab.
Methoden der Filmauswertung
(2003)