Corporate governance practices differ greatly in the United States and Germany. This paper describes the main institutional features of the German corporate governance system, focusing on universal banks and codetermination. The paper also summarizes existing empirical evidence that has...

We model competition in local deposit markets between for-profit and not-for-profit financial institutions. For-profit retail banks may offer a superior bundle of financial services, but not-for-profit (occupational) credit unions enjoy sponsor subsidies that allow them to capture a share of the...

National differences in corporate governance practices in Europe, such as board structures, shareholder structures, and labor participation rights, make it difficult to operate in the European cross-border mergers and acquisitions environment. Particularly thorny issues are "golden shares" and...

The ability of monetary policy actions to affect the private sector's incentive to invest in fixed capital is hotly debated. Whereas a downward shift in the yield curve increases the present value of expected cash flows and should spur investment, lower short term interest rates make delay more...

Real-business-cycle models suggest that an increase in the rate of productivity growth increases the real rate of interest. But economic theory is ambiguous when it comes to the effect of government budget deficits on the real rate of interest. Similarly, little is known about the effect of...

One interesting aspect of the financial services industry is that for-profit institutions such as commercial banks compete directly with not-for-profit financial intermediaries such as credit unions. In this article, we analyze competition among banks and between banks and credit unions using a...

The United States experienced a historic boom during the late 1990s and briefly into the new millennium, highlighted by rapid economic and productivity growth, surging corporate profitability, sustained business investment in many areas, including high technology and telecommunications, and a...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) with publicly traded equity. Although these companies hold government issued charters, their securities are not legally backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government. Yet, investors and rating agencies...

National corporate-governance traditions are distinctive, deeply rooted, and difficult to change. Recent research points to a country's legal traditions and its stage of economic development as important determinants of corporate-governance institutions. Common-law countries tend to provide more...

This paper develops an integrated model of pricing and dividend policies in open credit cooperatives (those that do business with members and non-members on a non-discriminatory basis). We show that both the distribution of member preferences and the amount of non-member business the cooperative...