A financial system can only perform its function of channelling funds from savers to investors if it offers sufficient assurance to the providers of the funds that they will reap the rewards which have been promised to them. To the extent that this assurance is not provided by contracts alone,...

In early July 2019, Christian Sewing, the CEO of Deutsche Bank, proclaimed a fundamental shift of the bank's strategy after finally obtaining the approval of the Supervisory Board, which the management seems to have requested for quite some time. The essential point of the reorientation is a...

This paper aspires to provide an overview of the issue of diversity of banking and financial systems and its development over time from a positive and a normative perspective. In other word: how different are banks within a given country and how much do banking systems and entire financial...

This paper aspires to provide an overview of the issue of diversity of banking and financial systems and its development over time from a positive and a normative perspective. In other word: how different are banks within a given country and how much do banking systems and entire financial...

The financial crisis of 2007-08 has stressed the importance of a sound financial system. Unlike other studies weighing the pros and cons of market versus bank-based systems, this paper investigates whether the main elements of the German financial system can be regarded as complementary and...

The paper is a follow-up to an article published in Technique Financière et Developpement in 2000 (see the appendix to the hardcopy version), which portrayed the first results of a new strategy in the field of development finance implemented in South-East Europe. This strategy consists in...

Since the beginning of the 1990s, it has been widely expected that the implementation of the European Single Market would lead to a rapid convergence of Europe’s financial systems. In the present paper we will show that at least in the period prior to the introduction of the common currency...

Wenn man untersuchen möchte, ob sich die Finanzsysteme verschiedener Länder im Verlauf der letzten Jahre aneinander angeglichen haben oder demnächst angleichen werden, braucht man ein Konzept zur Beschreibung von Finanzsystemen, durch das wesentliche Strukturen, deren Unterschiede und...

This paper is one of the two introductory chapters of the book The German Financial System. It first discusses two issues that have a general bearing on the entire book, and then provides a broad overview of the German financial system. The first general issue is that of clarifying what we mean...