Die volkswirtschaftliche Bedeutung von Private Equity
Ulrich Blum
Private Equity. Beurteilungs- und Bewertungsverfahren von Kapitalbeteiligungsgesellschaften,
2008
Abstract
Private equity is a very specific institutional way of providing private capital to enterprises. The contribution inquires why it increased its economic importance and public visibility over the last years. The role of private capital within the framework of the innovation theory, transaction cost theory and the risk theory is assessed. Private equity is a specific way of organizing the procurement with private capital for enterprises in risky markets in order to efficiently reducing transaction costs. More and above, it is important for credible market-entry strategies. As most markets are incomplete and because of tax regulations which cannot be considered to be efficient under present conditions, the economic role of private equity has increased. The increase economic role, but also importance in the firm, necessitates a steering of enterprises along value-oriented objectives. As the “hype” has decreased in summer 2007, the article ends with an assessment of future prospects.
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Parenting Benefit – A New Risk for Companies
Nicole Nulsch, Henry Dannenberg
Wirtschaft im Wandel,
No. 7,
2008
Abstract
One of the aims of the new parenting benefit – introduced by the German government in January 2007 – is to motivate fathers to take parental leave in order to take care of their young children. Until now, the effects of the parenting benefit have been discussed predominantly from the viewpoint of family policy. In contrast, this paper analyses how companies are affected by the new law. In 2007, the number of fathers who stayed at home to spend more time with their children increased significantly. More than half of the working applicants were already fathers. In the past, it was easy for companies to reduce their risk of losing an important employee due to the birth of a child as companies rather hired men than women. But this strategy will be less important in the future. It is expected that the risk-environment of companies will change because of a larger group of fathers taking parental leave. Such a changed risk-environment could increase the career opportunities of women and might reduce the gender wage gap. However, it is also expected that the overall risk of companies increases. Assumed that companies need equity to cover risks, an increase of the overall risk reduces investment opportunities if it is not possible to increase equity in the same way. This could influence the current economic development negatively.
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Equity and Bond Market Signals as Leading Indicators of Bank Fragility
Reint E. Gropp, Jukka M. Vesala, Giuseppe Vulpes
Journal of Money, Credit and Banking,
No. 2,
2006
Abstract
We analyse the ability of the distance to default and subordinated bond spreads to signal bank fragility in a sample of EU banks. We find leading properties for both indicators. The distance to default exhibits lead times of 6-18 months. Spreads have signal value close to problems only. We also find that implicit safety nets weaken the predictive power of spreads. Further, the results suggest complementarity between both indicators. We also examine the interaction of the indicators with other information and find that their additional information content may be small but not insignificant. The results suggest that market indicators reduce type II errors relative to predictions based on accounting information only.
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The international and German economic situation in autumn 2002
Wirtschaft im Wandel,
No. 14,
2002
Abstract
The world economy is currently fragile. The prospects are dampened both, by the current crisis in Iraq, leading to a rising oil price, and the sharp drop of equity prices. Since last spring, the economic expansion in the United States has lost momentum. Also in Asia, the previously buoyant output growth has decelerated again. The Euro Area is recovering from the slowdown of last year; the pace of the recovery, however, is very modest. Finally, in Japan GDP expanded only gradually.
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