On thursday September 19, 2019, the Berlin School of Economics will have its official opening ceremony at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin! For this special occasion, we are glad to welcome Nobel Laureate Jean Tirole, who will be holding the keynote address. This event signifies the official start of a joint Berlin-wide career development program and celebrates all those who have made ...
This paper examines whether biased income expectations due to overconfidence lead to higher levels of debt-taking. In a lab experiment, participants can purchase goods by borrowing against their future income. We exogenously manipulate income expectations by letting income depend on relative performance in hard and easy quiz tasks. We successfully generate biased income expectations and show that participants ...
While financial inclusion is typically addressed by improving the financial infrastructure, we show that a higher degree of financial literacy also has a clear beneficial effect. We study this effect at the cross-country level, which allows us to consider institutional variation. Regarding “access to finance”, financial infrastructure and financial literacy are mainly substitutes. However, regarding ...
Die deutsche Wirtschaft befindet sich wohl schon in einer Rezession. Denn die Weltwirtschaft, von der Deutschland als Exportland so abhängig ist, schwächelt bedenklich: Nachdem die Steuersenkungen von Trump verpufft sind und die chinesische Wirtschaft nicht mehr so stark wächst wie in der Vergangenheit, verunsichern internationale Konflikte wie der Handelsstreit zwischen Washington und ...
When in distress, a firm may need restructuring or liquidation; in either case, legal uncertainty compounds the difficulty. Sound and efficient insolvency regimes are important as these not just positively affect investment, innovation, and economic growth, but also the supply and cost of credit. The design of appropriate insolvency frameworks in Europe is, however, still controversial. The debate ...
Es scheint sich als Volksweisheit in unseren Köpfen festgesetzt zu haben, dass der kleine deutsche Sparer durch die Niedrigzinsen und die böse Geldpolitik der Europäischen Zentralbank (EZB) enteignet wird. Er erhält nichts mehr an Zinsen für sein mühsam Erspartes, muss daher noch mehr sparen. Und trotzdem hat er dann im Alter kein ausreichendes Renteneinkommen. Diese Enteignung ...
