When looking at the Spanish banking market through a German lens, the differences between the banking markets in these countries and between decentralised and centralised systems with regard to the SME-credit decision-making process become obvious. Despite our hypotheses that Spanish savings...

A comparison of the German banking system with that of the United Kingdom (UK) and Spain shows Germany to be decentralised not only regarding the distribution of banks, but also its financial and political system more generally. Decentralised banks, which are predominantly regional savings banks...

Die dezentralen Sparkassen und Kreditgenossenschaften in Deutschland gelten als prädestinierter Finanzpartner von KMU. Jedoch werden Zweifel an der Bedeutung und Zukunftsfähigkeit dieser mehr als 1.400 kleinen und regionalen Banken geäußert. Exemplarisch zeigen wir auf, dass dezentrale...

In this paper we discuss the potential for commercial microfinance in China. Particular emphasis is put on securitization of microloans and on structured microfinance in a China context. Three particular factors that we believe could support a strong growth in Chinese structured microfinance are...

With firms searching for secured external funding by engaging in multiple bank relationships on the one hand and banks for profit maximization on the other hand, conflicts of interests may arise when firms' banks demand access to corporate private information. This information can help banks to...

This paper re-visits the state of decentralised banking in Germany, Spain and the UK. The cross-country comparison we conducted has identified Germany as having the most decentralised banking system, followed by Spain and the UK, as expected. The development of regional and double-purpose banks,...

As expected, this comparison of the German and the UK banking systems shows substantial differences between the countries. In the UK, savings banks disappeared long ago and other regional banks have never become important in lending to business. Instead, the five large commercial banks dominate...

Social infrastructure has endured a long period of neglect in most developed and emerging countries, with chronic underinvestment exposed by the coronavirus crisis 2020. The financial crisis 2007/08 led to a slow revival of economic infrastructure policies, and a growing involvement of...

The paper examines the source of financial market fragmentation in sub-Saharan Africa in the framework of institutional economics. Based on fieldwork data from Ghana, Malawi, Nigeria, and Tanzania, it analyses financial risk management, the transaction costs for loan screening and monitoring,...

Recognizing that human rationality has bounds that are unequal across individuals entails treating it as a special scarce resource, tied to individuals and used for deciding on its own uses. This causes a meta-mathematical difficulty to the axiomatic theories of human capital and resource...