The recent financial crisis has brought new legislation in order to increase transparency in the banking sector. In Romania, as well as in the whole European Cummunity, the new legislation adresses, primarily, the protection of credit consumers. In compliance with EU Directive 2008/48/EC, the...

In the context of the current financial crisis, the stability of the financial system becomes a priority on the agenda of the national monetary authorities. Since “systemic risk” is widely accepted as the fundamental underlying concept for the study of financial instability, this paper...

This research paper responds to the current international concern in bank liquidity and offers a model for the optimization of the bank liquidity level, by identifying the marginal impact of the bank liquidity ratio on bank profitability. The non-linear relationship between these two variables...

Due to the information technology development, outsourcing has gained much importance, especially in the banking business where the creation of the shadow banking system through the outsourcing of risks on special-purpose entities has extended the corporate boundaries, increasing corporate...

In explaining economic phenomena, economic analysis concentrates on selected influences and fixes the host of other factors under a ceteris paribus clause. This view, which goes back to Alfred Marshall (1842-1924), is developed in the first part of the book. Aggregation is viewed as a particular...

Life annuities provide a guaranteed income for the remainder of the recipient’s lifetime, and therefore, annuitization presents an important option when choosing an adequate investment strategy for the retirement ages. While there are numerous research articles studying annuities from a...

Even 50 years after Modigliani/Miller’s irrelevance theorem, the basic question of how firms choose their capital structure remains unclear. This survey paper aims at summarizing and discussing corresponding recent developments in empirical capital structure research, which, in our view, are...

There has been a wide-spread misconception based on the imprecise wording of Art. 52 of the European Patent Convention (EPC) that the protection of business methods by patents is prohibited in Europe. This paper investigates the legal framework set by patent laws with respect to the...

Ein Großteil der Neugründungen in Deutschland ist auf staatliche Förderung von Existenzgründern zurückzuführen. Dieser Anteil hat sich nach Einführung des als „Ich-AG“ bekannten Existenzgründungszuschusses Anfang 2003 stark erhöht. Die Erfolgsfaktorenforschung hat diese Form von...

In 2003, Swiss Re introduced a mortality-based security designed to hedge excessive mortality changes for its life book of business. The concern was apparently brevity risk, i.e., the risk of premature death. The brevity risk due to a pandemic is similar to the property risk associated with...