Recent literature on multinational firms has stressed the importance of low productivity as a barrier to the cross-border expansion of firms. But firms may also need external finance to shoulder the costs of entering foreign markets. We develop a model of multinational firms facing real and...

Europe is struggling with the resolution of the severe debt crisis and is in the process of overhauling its institutional set up. One element of the reform agenda is the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) which is intended to provide liquidity assistance to countries in case financial stability...

Insufficient capital buffers of banks have been identified as one main cause for the large systemic effects of the recent financial crisis. Although higher capital is no panacea, it yet features prominently in proposals for regulatory reform. But how do increased capital requirements affect...

Building on a theoretical model we test the hypothesis that effort choices and preferences for redistribution are simultaneously determined. Using cross-country panel data from the World Value Survey, we find that it is important to model preferences for redistribution and effort choices...

Affiliates of German firms in Eastern Europe differ from those in the rest of the world. They have smaller sales and they employ more labor. Labor productivity is thus lower than in affiliates of German firms elsewhere. Moreover, multinational activity in Eastern Europe is mostly unilaterally...

International bank portfolios constitute a large component of international country portfolios. Yet, their response to macroeconomic conditions and their impact on the international transmission of business cycles developments remains largely unexplored. We use a novel dataset on banks?...

The question whether international openness causes higher domestic growth has been subject to intense discussions in the empirical growth literature. This paper addresses this issue using the fall of the Berlin wall in 1990 as a natural experiment. We analyze whether the slow-down in convergence...

Macroeconomic risks could magnify individual bank risk. Mitigating the influence of economy-wide risks on banks could therefore be very important to maintain a smooth-running banking system. In this paper, we explore the extent to which macroeconomic risks affect banks. We use a bank-level...

This paper surveys recent literature on international mergers and acquisitions in banking. We focus on three main questions. First, what are the determinants of cross-border mergers of commercial banks? Second, do cross-border mergers affect the efficiency of banks? Third, what are the risk...

Many theoretical models show that trade openness has positive welfare implications. Yet, openness might affect different social groups and regions asymmetrically, even within a given country. We use Italian regional data to answer the question whether trade openness affects within-country income...