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...

This paper deals with the proposed use of sovereign credit ratings in the Basel Accord on Capital Adequacy (Basel II) and considers its potential effect on emerging markets financ-ing. It investigates in a first attempt the consequences of the planned revisions on the two central aspects of...

Credit rating changes for long-term foreign currency debt may act as a wake-up call with up-grades and downgrades in one country affecting other financial markets within and across national borders. Such a potential (contagious) rating effect is likely to be stronger in emerg-ing market...

We present an analysis of VaR forecasts and P&L-series of all 13 German banks that used internal models for regulatory purposes in the year 2001. To this end, we introduce the notion of well-behaved forecast systems. Furthermore, we provide a series of statistical tools to perform our analyses....

Despite a large literature documenting that the efficacy of monetary policy depends on how inflation expectations are anchored, many monetary policy models assume: (1) the inflation target of monetary policy is constant; and, (2) the inflation target is known by all economic agents. This paper...

Recent evidence on the effect of government spending shocks on consumption cannot be easily reconciled with existing optimizing business cycle models. We extend the standard New Keynesian model to allow for the presence of rule-of-thumb (non-Ricardian) consumers. We show how the interaction of...

This chapter analyzes the role of financial accounting in the German financial system. It starts from the common perception that German accounting is rather uninformative. This characterization is appropriate from the perspective of an arms length or outside investor and when confined to the...

In Germany a public discussion on the power of banks has been going on for decades now with the term power having at least two meanings. On the one hand, it denotes the power of banks to control public corporations through direct shareholdings or the exercise of proxy votes this is the power of...

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),...

In this paper we estimate a small model of the euro area to be used as a laboratory for evaluating the performance of alternative monetary policy strategies. We start with the relationship between output and inflation and investigate the fit of the nominal wage contracting model due to Taylor...