Refine
Year of publication
Document Type
- Report (471) (remove)
Language
- English (471) (remove)
Has Fulltext
- yes (471)
Is part of the Bibliography
- no (471)
Keywords
- islamic state (13)
- terrorism (13)
- IS (9)
- Egypt (8)
- Syria (8)
- islamism (7)
- Europe (6)
- Germany (6)
- Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (6)
- USA (6)
Institute
- Gesellschaftswissenschaften (212)
- Exzellenzcluster Die Herausbildung normativer Ordnungen (112)
- Wirtschaftswissenschaften (96)
- Center for Financial Studies (CFS) (42)
- House of Finance (HoF) (30)
- Sustainable Architecture for Finance in Europe (SAFE) (30)
- Informatik (20)
- Mathematik (16)
- Extern (8)
- Physik (7)
The paper analyzes the mutual influence of the capital structure and the investment decision of a bank, as well as the incentive effects of the bank executives compensation schemes on these decisions. In case the government implicitly or explicitly insures deposits and/or the banks debt, banks are incentivized to invest in risky assets and to have a high leverage. Capital regulation could potentially solve this excessive risk taking problem. However, this is only possible if the regulator can observe and properly measure the investment risks of the bank, which was called into question during the 2008-09 financial crisis. Hence, we propose a regulatory approach that is also able to implement the first best risk taking levels by the bank, but does not require the regulator to know the investment risk of the bank. The regulatory approach involves the implementation of capital requirements, which are made contingent on the management compensation.
Collateral, default risk, and relationship lending : an empirical study on financial contracting
(1999)
This paper provides further insights into the nature of relationship lending by analyzing the link between relationship lending, borrower quality and collateral as a key variable in loan contract design. We used a unique data set based on the examination of credit files of five leading German banks, thus relying on information actually used in the process of bank credit decision-making and contract design. In particular, bank internal borrower ratings serve to evaluate borrower quality, and the bank's own assessment of its housebank status serves to identify information-intensive relationships. Additionally, we used data on workout activities for borrowers facing financial distress. We found no significant correlation between ex ante borrower quality and the incidence or degree of collateralization. Our results indicate that the use of collateral in loan contract design is mainly driven by aspects of relationship lending and renegotiations. We found that relationship lenders or housebanks do require more collateral from their debtors, thereby increasing the borrower's lock-in and strengthening the banks' bargaining power in future renegotiation situations. This result is strongly supported by our analysis of the correlation between ex post risk, collateral and relationship lending since housebanks do more frequently engage in workout activities for distressed borrowers, and collateralization increases workout probability.
Empirical evidence suggests that even those firms presumably most in need of monitoring-intensive financing (young, small, and innovative firms) have a multitude of bank lenders, where one may be special in the sense of relationship lending. However, theory does not tell us a lot about the economic rationale for relationship lending in the context of multiple bank financing. To fill this gap, we analyze the optimal debt structure in a model that allows for multiple but asymmetric bank financing. The optimal debt structure balances the risk of lender coordination failure from multiple lending and the bargaining power of a pivotal relationship bank. We show that firms with low expected cash-flows or low interim liquidation values of assets prefer asymmetric financing, while firms with high expected cash-flow or high interim liquidation values of assets tend to finance without a relationship bank.
This paper presents a theory that explains why it is beneficial for banks to engage in circular lending activities on the interbank market. Using a simple network structure, it shows that if there is a non-zero bailout probability, banks can significantly increase the expected repayment of uninsured creditors by entering into cyclical liabilities on the interbank market before investing in loan portfolios. Therefore, banks are better able to attract funds from uninsured creditors. Our results show that implicit government guarantees incentivize banks to have large interbank exposures, to be highly interconnected, and to invest in highly correlated, risky portfolios. This can serve as an explanation for the observed high interconnectedness between banks and their investment behavior in the run-up to the subprime mortgage crisis.
Bency Eichorn learns in kollel and, on the side, has been researching about various segulos. For his wedding he authored a book, Simchas Zion, discussing the segulah of keeping the afikomom from year-to-year. The post below is a small part of a much larger project on this segulah and has been adapted for the blog.
This is a brief in the bEUcitizen policy brief series. The bEUcitizen project - funded by the European Union - set out to identify, investigate, discuss, and ameliorate the barriers to the active use of rights (and knowledge of duties, the concomitant to rights, in so far as there are any) by European citizens. The project aimed to provide a comparative overview and classification of the various barriers to the exercise of the rights and obligations of European Union citizens in the member states. Simultaneously, the project analysed whether and how such barriers can be overcome and the future opportunities and challenges the European Union and its member states face to further develop the idea and reality of European Union citizenship.
Drawing on research conducted during the project, this policy brief discusses the problems preventing European Union citizens from becoming active political citizens. European citizenship as active political citizenship has been underdeveloped from the start and is currently under strong pressure. Over time, European Union citizens seem to have lost enthusiasm for the European political process: Voter turnout in European Parliament elections decreased from 61,99% in 1979 to 42,61% in 2014. Attempts to transform elections for the European Parliament into a meaningful decision about the policies and the personnel of European institutions have been ineffective so far in two ways: On the one hand, they did not raise more interest in European affairs; on the other hand, and even more problematically, the "Spitzenkandidaten"-experiment was overshadowed by the power struggle between national leaders and the European Parliament.
Although similar tendencies towards decreasing voter turnout can be observed in national elections, the trend of fading popular support is particularly alarming at the European Union level. It threatens to undermine the legitimacy and functionality of the European Union, thus jeopardizing the entire integration process. Institutions without support cannot last. The European Union provokes a rather negative political reaction among its citizens and populist activism is challenging its policies and the integration process more broadly. The Brexit decision expresses this problem in an ideal-typical form: Europe-friendly citizens do not use their right to vote while anti-European activism brings citizens to the ballot box. Concerned with this passivity as well as with the activism mobilised by anti-European populism, Europe-friendly observers and actors see a major opportunity for the European Union to strengthen the European Parliament as the core institution of a European representative democracy.
How to abolish cyberwar
(2014)
Part III of our series "Cyberpeace: Dimensionen eines Gegenentwurfs" on cyberpeace: Cyberwar is like a discursive plague. After years and years of writing texts about it and against it, the concept is still scary, still spreading, still harmful. Its power is such that it is not simply being used in discourse – but is in fact forcing its specific discursive structures and rules on us. In short, we may keep questioning this concept, but we will never get rid of it...
On 22 May 2017, the suicide bomber Salman Abedi killed 22 people and injured many more after an Ariana Grande concert in the Manchester Arena. On 9 September 2017, the Manchester Arena was reopened with a benefit show labelled as a “We Are Manchester” concert. The concert’s aim was to raise money for a place of memorial for the victims of the attack. “We Are Manchester” is only one of the many peaceful responses to the attacks: In contrast to the heated debates on increasing security, they reveal different ways of standing together for a liberal and diverse society against the fear caused by terrorism...