A healthy banking system is a fundamental condition for financial stability. When assessing the riskiness of the banking system, analysts often restrict their focus to large banks. This may create a distorted picture in countries like Germany with fragmented banking systems. In Germany, savings...

Using matched bank-firm-level data and the 2014 depreciation of the euro, we show that exchange rate depreciations can lead to higher loan supply. Large banks with high net dollar exposure do not increase their lending to non-financial firms, but—through interbank markets—to small banks...

Using matched bank-firm-level data and the 2014 depreciation of the euro, we show that exchange rate depreciations can lead to higher loan supply. Large banks with high net dollar exposure do not increase their lending to non-financial firms, but—through interbank markets—to small banks...

Theory of financial intermediation gives contradicting answers to the question whether banks should diversify or focus their loan portfolios. Our aim is to find out which of the two strategies is predominant in the German banking market. To this end we measure diversification for all German...

Panel unit root tests of real exchange rates – as opposed to univariate tests – usually reject non-stationarity. These tests, however, could be biased if the real exchange rate contained MA roots. Indeed, two independent arguments claim that the real exchange rate, being a sum of a...