Private equity (PE) investors tend to invest in well-established companies, pay attention to high risk and shy away from small and opaque companies. They avoid companies with ownership structures that offer little opportunity for exercising influence, since, for example, there is already another...

This study investigates the role of gender in individuals’ financial risk taking. We find that although females exhibit, on average, lower risk propensity than males, the effect of gender on the actual risk taking varies across countries and across types of financial decisions. Specifically,...

Studies of peer-to-peer lending in the USA find that female borrowers have better chances of getting funds than males. Is differential treatment of borrowers of different sexes a common feature of peer-to-peer lendingmarkets or is it subject to specific businessmodels, ways of fixing loan...

With banking sectors worldwide still suffering from the effects of the financial crisis, public discussion of plans to place toxic assets in one or more bad banks has gained steam in recent weeks. The following paper presents a plan how governments can efficiently relieve ailing banks from toxic...

Die Vierteljahrshefte zur Wirtschaftsforschung erscheinen seit 1926 als wirtschaftspolitische Zeitschrift des DIW Berlin. Sie sind damit das älteste Periodikum des Instituts. Seit 1938 trägt die Zeitschrift ihren heutigen Namen. Nicht alle Jahrgänge sind erschienen. Vier Bände fielen den...

The paper investigates the link between bank concentration and a country's buyout market. We perform a macro level analysis for 15 European countries during 1997-2007. We estimate the elasticity of the country i's buyout market to country i's concentration in the banking sector. Our major...