Die Entwicklung der Corporate Governance deutscher Banken seit 1950
R. H. Schmidt, Felix Noth
Bankhistorisches Archiv,
No. 2,
2011
Abstract
The present paper gives an overview of the development of Corporate Governance of German banks since the 1950s. The focus will be on economic analysis. The most striking changes in Corporate Governance occurred with the ownership structure of commercial banks, in particular with the major joint-stock banks. In addition to that, the capital market has become a core element of Corporate Governance in all major German banks, which have replaced their prior concentration on the interests of a broadly defined circle of stakeholders by a one-sided concentration on shareholders’ interests. In contrast, with savings banks and cooperative cooperative banks, Corporate Governance has remained unchanged for the most part. Exceptions to this are the regional state banks: in their case, after they had turned away from traditional business models and in particular following the discontinuation of the guarantee obligation, the problems of their Corporate Governance, which were already discernible beforehand, became quite obvious. If you include the financial crisis, beginning in 2007, in the analysis, it becomes evident that it was precisely a Corporate Governance unilaterally geared to shareholders’ interest and the efficiency of the capital market that materially contributed to the evolution and widening of the crisis.
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Macroeconomic Challenges in the Euro Area and the Acceding Countries
Katja Drechsel
Dissertation, Fachbereich Wirtschaftswissenschaften der Universität Osnabrück,
2010
Abstract
deutscher Titel: Makroökonomische Herausforderungen für die Eurozone und die Beitrittskandidaten
Abstract: The conduct of effective economic policy faces a multiplicity of macroeconomic challenges, which requires a wide scope of theoretical and empirical analyses. With a focus on the European Union, this doctoral dissertation consists of two parts which make empirical and methodological contributions to the literature on forecasting real economic activity and on the analysis of business cycles in a boom-bust framework in the light of the EMU enlargement. In the first part, we tackle the problem of publication lags and analyse the role of the information flow in computing short-term forecasts up to one quarter ahead for the euro area GDP and its main components. A huge dataset of monthly indicators is used to estimate simple bridge equations. The individual forecasts are then pooled, using different weighting schemes. To take into consideration the release calendar of each indicator, six forecasts are compiled successively during the quarter. We find that the sequencing of information determines the weight allocated to each block of indicators, especially when the first month of hard data becomes available. This conclusion extends the findings of the recent literature. Moreover, when combining forecasts, two weighting schemes are found to outperform the equal weighting scheme in almost all cases. In the second part, we focus on the potential accession of the new EU Member States in Central and Eastern Europe to the euro area. In contrast to the discussion of Optimum Currency Areas, we follow a non-standard approach for the discussion on abandonment of national currencies the boom-bust theory. We analyse whether evidence for boom-bust cycles is given and draw conclusions whether these countries should join the EMU in the near future. Using a broad range of data sets and empirical methods we document credit market imperfections, comprising asymmetric financing opportunities across sectors, excess foreign currency liabilities and contract enforceability problems both at macro and micro level. Furthermore, we depart from the standard analysis of comovements of business cycles among countries and rather consider long-run and short-run comovements across sectors. While the results differ across countries, we find evidence for credit market imperfections in Central and Eastern Europe and different sectoral reactions to shocks. This gives favour for the assessment of the potential euro accession using this supplementary, non-standard approach.
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Regional Entrepreneurial Opportunities in the Biotech Industry: Exploring the Transition from Award-winning Nascent Entrepreneurs to Real Start-ups
H. Wolf, Claus Michelsen, Michael Schwartz
Abstract
Knowledge of factors that determine the transition from nascent entrepreneurship into real entrepreneurship is of major importance for policies aiming to effectively stimulate start-ups. Whereas scholars concentrated on person-specific factors to explain transition probabilities, environmental characteristics have been fairly neglected. Given that entrepreneurship is a strongly localized phenomenon, this paper argues that regional entrepreneurial opportunities are a driving force behind the transition from nascent entrepreneurship to new venture creation. Based on unique data on 103 nascent entrepreneurs in the German biotechnology industry, we empirically assess the importance of regional entrepreneurial opportunities on transition probabilities. Further, we introduce a new
approach to measure nascent entrepreneurship by capturing individuals that actively participate in start-up competitions and have won at least one competition. Controlling for technology and individual characteristics, we find strong support for our hypotheses relating to the significant impact of general regional opportunities, specific regional opportunities and the entrepreneurial environment for the probability of transition from award-winning nascent entrepreneurs to real start-ups.
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Finance and Growth in a Bank-Based Economy: Is It Quantity or Quality that Matters?
Michael Koetter, Michael Wedow
Journal of International Money and Finance,
No. 8,
2010
Abstract
Most finance–growth studies approximate the size of financial systems rather than the quality of intermediation to explain economic growth differentials. Furthermore, the neglect of systematic differences in cross-country studies could drive the result that finance matters. We suggest a measure of bank’s intermediation quality using bank-specific efficiency estimates and focus on the regions of one economy only: Germany. This quality measure has a significantly positive effect on growth. This result is robust to the exclusion of banks operating in multiple regions, controlling for the proximity of financial markets, when distinguishing different banking sectors active in Germany, and when excluding the structurally weaker East from the sample.
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de-industrialisation and re-industrialisation. Is the East German industry a stability factor of regional economic development?
Gerhard Heimpold
Bundesinstitut für Bau-, Stadt- und Raumforschung im Bundesamt für Bauwesen und Raumordnung (Hrsg.), 20 Jahre deutsche Einheit – Zwei Dekaden im Rückblick. Informationen zur Raumentwicklung, Heft 10/11,
2010
Abstract
Im Beitrag wird die Entwicklung der Industrie in den ostdeutschen Regionen seit Beginn der 1990er Jahre untersucht. Zentrale Frage ist, ob sich der industrielle Sektor zu einem wirtschaftlichen Stabilitätsfaktor in den ostdeutschen Regionen entwickelt hat. Obwohl sich die Industrie in Ostdeutschland bis zum Beginn der Wirtschaftskrise im Jahr 2008 – gemessen am an der Entwicklung der Bruttowertschöpfung – zu einem Wachstumsmotor entwickelt hatte, weisen die intra-industriellen Strukturen in den meisten Regionen Ostdeutschlands weiterhin Defizite in Form unterdurchschnittlicher Anteile technologieintensiver Branchen und hochwertiger Dienstleistungsfunktionen auf. Demzufolge wird weiterer Strukturwandel notwendig sein.
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State Aid in the Enlarged European Union. An Overview
Jens Hölscher, Nicole Nulsch, Johannes Stephan
Abstract
In the early phase of transition that started with the 1990s, Central and Eastern European Countries pursued economic restructuring of the enterprise sector that involved massive injections of state support. Also foreign investment from the West and facilitation of the development of a market economy involved massive injections of state support. With their accession to the European Union (EU), levels and forms of state aid came under critical review by the European Commission. This inquiry investigates whether the integration of the new member states operates on a level playing field with respect to state aid. Quantitative and qualitative analysis is relied upon to answer this key, as well as other, related questions. Findings suggest that in recent years a level playing field across the EU has indeed emerged. State aid in the new EU member countries is rather handled more strictly than laxer compared to the ‘old’ EU countries.
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20 Jahre Deutsche Einheit: Von der Transformation zur europäischen Integration - Tagungsband
IWH-Sonderhefte,
No. 3,
2010
Abstract
Der Band dokumentiert die zweitägige internationale Konferenz zum zwanzigsten Jahr der Deutschen Einheit, die am 11. und 12. März 2010 unter Mitwirkung namhafter Vertreter aus Wissenschaft und Politik mit rund 250 Besuchern in Halle stattfand. Veranstalter waren das Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung Halle (IWH), die Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) und der Sonderforschungsbereich „Gesellschaftliche Entwicklungen nach dem Systemumbruch. Diskontinuität, Tradition, Strukturbildung“ (SFB 580) an den Universitäten in Halle und Jena. Ziel der Tagung war es, den wirtschaftlichen und gesellschaftlichen Wandel in den Post-Transformationsländern zu beschreiben, zu analysieren und einer kritischen Würdigung zu unterziehen. Aus dem bisherigen Verlauf dieses Prozesses sollen Lehren gezogen, zukünftige Entwicklungsperspektiven und auch Übertragungsmöglichkeiten auf die weltweit weitergehenden Transformationen aufgezeigt werden.
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