Der Anteil von Frauen in Aufsichtsräten steigt bereits seit 2012 kontinuierlich – insbesondere in jenen Firmen, die seit 2016 die Geschlechterquote zu berücksichtigen haben, in geringerem Maße auch in den von der gesetzlichen Regelung nicht betroffenen Firmen. Die Umsetzung der Quote wurde hierbei nicht über eine hohe Anzahl an Mehrfachmandatierungen erreicht. Die Hoffnung, dass die Geschlechterquote ...
Um die Auswirkungen der Corona-Krise abzufedern, haben die Zentralbanken weitreichende geldpolitische Maßnahmen ergriffen. Die US-amerikanische Federal Reserve hat ihre Zinsen gesenkt und ebenso wie die Europäische Zentralbank ihre Anleihekaufprogramme ausgeweitet. Fraglich ist, ob diese Maßnahmen den gewünschten Effekt haben, also die Märkte beruhigen und die Realwirtschaft stützen. Zwar lassen sich ...
To cushion the economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic, central banks have taken far-reaching monetary policy measures. The US Federal Reserve has lowered its interest rates and, like the European Central Bank, has expanded its bond purchase programs. However, it is questionable whether these measures are having the desired effect of calming the markets and supporting the real economy. It is true ...
We examine the introduction of a gender quota law in Germany, mandating a minimum 30% of the underrepresented gender on the supervisory boards of a particular type of firms. We exploit the fact that Germany has a two-tier corporate system consisting of the affected supervisory boards and unaffected management boards within the same firm. We find a positive effect on the female share on supervisory ...
I build a model where creditworthy countries may use fiscal austerity to communicate their ability to repay sovereign debt and show that the signaling channel is active only for high levels of asymmetric information. The model generates a negative association between the amount of public information, provided by the rating agencies, and fiscal tightness. Informed by the model predictions, I build a ...
Sovereign borrowers may tighten their fiscal stance in order to signal their creditworthiness to lenders. In a model of sovereign debt with incomplete information, I show that a trustworthy country may reduce its debt beyond the optimal level in order to separate itself from less reliable countries. Since austerity is costly, the gains in the price of debt from separating need to be high enough, as ...
This paper analyzes the extent to which selection explains the observed discrepancy between solicited and unsolicited ratings. I propose a model of selection with truth telling rating agencies and borrowers with the ability to veto the revelation of the rating. The observed difference between the two categories of ratings in different sectors is in line with the prediction of the model. In the sovereign ...
The European Union has put in place an extraordinary array of policy measures to mitigate the devastating economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. The sheer amount and extent of the support economic lifelines makes a rushed termination of policies potentially subject to dire cliff effects. Avoiding these cliff effects requires a combination of decisive and long-lasting fiscal stimuli with an ...