By studying the German universal banking system in the pre-World War I period, in comparison with its American and British counterparts, this paper investigates whether universality (the combination of commercial and investment banking services) influences banking industry concentration, levels...

Information asymmetries and conflicts of interest are theorized to inflate the cost of external finance, but formal bank relationships are thought to ameliorate such problems and may even lead to excessive leverage. Bank oversight is associated with slightly higher leverage but not with greater...

Underpricing of new issues relates negatively to underwriter reputation in studies covering the US during the early 1970s until 1997 but positively in one study of IPOs from 1992-4. This paper investigates whether IPO underpricing depends on the organization of the financial system, whether...

Using a new daily dataset for all stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange, we study the impact of information asymmetry during the liquidity freeze and market run of October 1907 - one of the most severe financial crises of the 20th century. We estimate that the run on the market increased...