Guarantee banks backed by the state aim to close the gap in the financing of small and medium-sized enterprises or start-ups caused by lacking collateral or equity and high information asymmetry. The present study quantifies the economic and fiscal net benefits of guarantee banks in the new...

To sustain growth in an aging economy, it is important to ease the financing of small firms by bank loans. Using bank internal data of small business loans in Germany, we examine the determinants of loan rates in the period 1995-2010. Beyond characteristics of the firm, the loan contract, and...

This paper examines the influence of environmental factors on technical, cost, scale and revenue efficiency of German savings banks in 2001-2005. Taking into account growing regional disparities in economic wealth and population size, it differentiates between declining and growing regions....

An overview of previous evidence about relationship banking to SMEs shows that multiple banking relationships prevail even at small firms, but there is hardly evidence on the number of banking relationships held by micro firms. To close this gap, we use data from a survey conducted among...

This paper examines the composition of supervisory boards of German banks for a sample of 41 large banks in the period 1999-2006. We find that the supervisory board structure reflects both outside control by shareholders and inside control by stakeholders. Most of the non-employee board members...

This is the first attempt to test hypotheses about financial constraints of ethnic minority owned businesses in Germany. Using data from a survey among 3,000 ethnic and native entrepreneurs, we examine differences in the financing patterns between both demographic groups. We find that...

Aufgrund der starken regionalen Verankerung kann bei den Sparkassen ein besonderes Interesse an den Folgen des demographischen Wandels und speziell von Alterung und Abwanderung vermutet werden. Dabei sind die Sparkassen nicht nur über das Regionalprinzip eng mit einer bestimmten Region...

This paper investigates the performance of Germany's three-pillar banking system in providing financial services nationwide, regarding different outreach indicators. At the federal state level, bank outreach shows South-North and West-East gaps. Combining regional and bank data at the district...

Staatliche Bürgschaften und Bürgschaftsbanken sind wichtige Instrumente, um Kreditrationierung aufgrund von Informationsasymmetrien zu reduzieren und somit die Finanzierung kleiner und mittelständischer Unternehmen zu erleichtern. Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht die Wirksamkeit dieser...

The present paper investigates the number of bank relationships of small and medium-sized enterprises in Switzerland using survey data from 1996 and 2002. We differentiate between overall bank relationships and lending relationships and disaggregate the loan market with respect to firm sizes,...