To clarify the causal links between financial activity and economic growth, three theoretical models are analyzed and a structural equation path models is estimated. In the modeling part, poverty traps result from large fixed costs or high proportions of real investment to run a financial...

An endogenous growth model on finance and growth is formulated, and empirical analyses are conducted. The model exhibits structural shifts and breaks caused by institutional changes, suggesting that a linear approach is inadequate. To address this point empirically, we fit data for 90 countries...

This paper analyzes the determinants of the interest margin of German banks over the period 1995–2007, explicitly addressing differences among different bank groups. We use three empirical models to focus on the following aspects: the time evolution of the interest margin, the average...

Monetäre Schätzansätze zur Erfassung der Schattenwirtschaft. Ein Vergleich verschiedener Methoden Das Phänomen der Schattenwirtschaft hat in der Öffentlichkeit reges Interesse auf sich gezogen, wobei vor allem zwei Fragen diskutiert werden: Wie groß ist die Schattenwirtschaft eigentlich,...

"Finanzintermediäre und Effektivität der Geldpolitik" Der gesamtwirtschaftliche Einfluß von Finanzintermediären, der aus monetaristischer Sicht von nur untergeordneter Bedeutung ist und in hochaggregierten keynesianischen Modellen oft unberücksichtigt bleibt, wird in...

We use a compound option-based structural credit risk model to infer a term structure of banking crisis risk from market data on bank stocks in daily frequency. Considering debt service payments with different maturities this term structure assigns a separate estimator for short- and long-term...

This paper presents the first MIMIC (multiple indicator multiple causes) model estimate of the size and development of the shadow economy and of do-it-yourself (DIY) activities in Germany from 1970 to 2005. By 2005, they reached a level of about 17% and 4.94%. While the shadow economy has...

We investigate the consistency of efficiency scores derived with two competing frontier methods in the financial economics literature: Stochastic Frontier and Data Envelopment Analysis. We sample 34,192 observations for all German universal banks and analyze whether efficiency measures yield...