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Germany’s economy is so bad even sausage factories are closingIWHThe Economist, January 15, 2026
Weak bank supervision could give banks the ability to shift risk from themselves to supervisors. We use cross-border bank mergers as a natural experiment to test changes in risk and the impact of supervision. We examine cross-border bank mergers and find that the supervisory structures of the partners’ countries influence changes in post-merger total risk. An acquirer from a country with strong supervision lowers total risk after a cross-border merger. However, total risk increases when the target bank is located in a country with relatively strong supervision. This result is consistent with strong host regulators limiting the risky activities of their local banks. Foreign-owned competitors could then engage in the risky projects, especially if the foreign banks’ supervisors are not strong. An acquirer entering a country with strong supervision appears to shift risk back to its home country. The results suggest that bank supervisors can reduce total banking risk in their countries by being strong.
We analyze the stability of efficiency rankings of German universal banks between 1993 and 2004. First, we estimate traditional efficiency scores with stochastic cost and alternative profit frontier analysis. Then, we explicitly allow for different risk preferences and measure efficiency with a structural model based on utility maximization. Using the almost ideal demand system, we estimate input- and profit-demand functions to obtain proxies for expected return and risk. Efficiency is then measured in this risk-return space. Mean risk-return efficiency is somewhat higher than cost and considerably higher than profit efficiency (PE). More importantly, rank–order correlation between these measures are low or even negative. This suggests that best-practice institutes should not be identified on the basis of traditional efficiency measures alone. Apparently, low cost and/or PE may merely result from alternative yet efficiently chosen risk-return trade-offs.
Most bank merger studies do not control for hidden bailouts, which may lead to biased results. In this study we employ a unique data set of approximately 1000 mergers to analyze the determinants of bank mergers. We use undisclosed information on banks’ regulatory intervention history to distinguish between distressed and non-distressed mergers. Among merging banks, we find that improving financial profiles lower the likelihood of distressed mergers more than the likelihood of non-distressed mergers. The likelihood to acquire a bank is also reduced but less than the probability to be acquired. Both distressed and non-distressed mergers have worse CAMEL profiles than non-merging banks. Hence, non-distressed mergers may be motivated by the desire to forestall serious future financial distress and prevent regulatory intervention.
Has the introduction of the Euro fostered financial integration in Europe? We answer this question using a data set of banks’ bilateral foreign assets and liabilities provided by the Bank for International Settlements. The data cover the pre-Euro period (1995–1998) and the post-Euro period (1999–2005). We use information from 10 OECD reporting countries and all OECD recipient countries. Gravity regressions show a positive and significant impact of the Euro on bilateral financial linkages. This effect is stronger and more robust for banks’ foreign assets than for their foreign liabilities.
How do banks react to increased competition? Recent banking theory significantly disagrees regarding the impact of competition on bank orientation—i.e., the choice of relationship-based versus transactional banking. We empirically investigate the impact of interbank competition on bank branch orientation. We employ a unique data set containing detailed information on bank–firm relationships. We find that bank branches facing stiff local competition engage considerably more in relationship-based lending. Our results illustrate that competition and relationships are not necessarily inimical.
Outright bank failures without prior indication of financial instability are very rare. In fact, banks can be regarded as troubled to varying degrees before outright closure. But failure studies usually neglect the ordinal nature of bank distress. We distinguish four different kinds of increasingly severe events on the basis of the distress database of the Deutsche Bundesbank. Only the worst distress event entails a bank to exit the market. Since the four categories of hazard functions are not proportional, we specify a generalized ordered logit model to estimate respective probabilities of distress simultaneously. We find that the likelihood of ordered distress events changes differently in response to given changes in the financial profiles of banks. Consequently, bank failure studies should account more explicitly for the different shades of distress. This allows an assessment of the relative importance of financial profile components for different degrees of bank distress.
Robust (cross-border) interbank markets are important for the proper functioning of modern financial systems. However, a network of interbank exposures may lead to domino effects following the event of an initial bank failure. We investigate the evolution and determinants of contagion risk for the Belgian banking system over the period 1993–2002 using detailed information on aggregate interbank exposures of individual banks, large bilateral interbank exposures, and cross-border interbank exposures. The "structure" of the interbank market affects contagion risk. We find that a change from a complete structure (where all banks have symmetric links) toward a "multiplemoney-center" structure (where money centers are symmetrically linked to otherwise disconnected banks) has decreased the risk and impact of contagion. In addition, an increase in the relative importance of cross-border interbank exposures has lowered local contagion risk. However, this reduction may have been compensated by an increase in contagion risk stemming from foreign banks.
We use a new bank-level dataset to study the FDI-versus-exports decision for German banks. We extend the literature on multinational firms in two directions. First, we simultaneously study FDI and the export of cross-border financial services. Second, we test recent theories on multinational firms which show the importance of firm heterogeneity [Helpman, E., Melitz, M.J., Yeaple, S.R., 2004. Export versus FDI. American Economic Review 94 (1), 300–316]. Our results show that FDI and cross-border services are complements rather than substitutes. Heterogeneity of banks has a significant impact on the internationalization decision. More profitable and larger banks are more likely to expand internationally than smaller banks. They have more extensive foreign activities, and they are more likely to engage in FDI in addition to cross-border financial services.
En este artículo se analiza si el programa de intensificación de la integración del sector financier europeo puede dañar a la innovación y al crecimiento en Europa. En particular, es preciso resaltar los problemas que dicha integración financiera puede ocasionar sobre los últimos avances en materia de desarrollo empresarial. La integración financiera, al intensificar la competencia y la consolidación del sector bancario europeo, podría poner en peligro la financiación procedente de las fuentes más innovadoras. Sin embargo, al sopesar los datos actuales, la conclusión es que estos problemas serían, a lo sumo, transitorios.
Standard neoclassical models of economic integration are based on the assumptions that capital and labor are substitutes and that the geography of factor market integration does not matter. Yet, these two assumptions are violated if agglomeration forces among factors from specific source countries are at work. Agglomeration implies that factors behave as complements and that the country of origin matters. This paper analyzes agglomeration between capital and labor empirically. We use state-level German data to answer the question whether and how migration and foreign direct investment (FDI) are linked. Stocks of inward FDI and of immigrants have similar determinants, and the geography of factor market integration matters. There are higher stocks of inward FDI in German states hosting a large foreign population from the same country of origin. This agglomeration effect is confined to higher-income source countries.
