Universal Banking

In this paper I try to address the question of whether, and why, it matters whether banking supervision is undertaken in-house in the Central Bank or in a separate specialised supervisory institution. After all, the bank supervisors and those in the Central Bank concerned with systemic stability must continue to work closely together wherever the supervisors are physically located. Nevertheless

We study a set of German open-end mutual funds for a time period during which this industry emerged from its infancy. In those years, the distribution channel for mutual funds was dominated by the brick-and-mortar retail networks of the large universal banks. Using monthly observations from 12/1986 through 12/1998, we investigate if cross-sectional return differences across mutual funds affect their

A stylized macroeconomic model is developed with an indebted, heterogeneous Investment Banking Sector funded by borrowing from a retail banking sector. The government guarantees retail deposits. Investment banks choose how risky their activities should be. We compared the benefits of separated vs. universal banking modelled as a vertical integration of the retail and investment banks. The incidence of banking default is considered under different constellations of shocks and degrees of competitiveness. The benefits of universal banking rise in the volatility of idiosyncratic shocks to trading strategies and are positive even for very bad common shocks, even though government bailouts, which are costly, are larger compared to the case of separated banking entities. The welfare assessment of the structure of banks may depend crucially on the kinds of shock hitting the economy as well as on the efficiency of government intervention.

Between the 1880s and the 1930s, three "regulatory cycles" can be identified in Italy. In the underlying model, each financial crisis gives rise to a regulatory change, which is circumvented in due time by financial innovation, that can then contribute to the outbreak of a new financial crisis. In Italy, overtrading of the banks of issue in the 1880s contributed

This study assesses the impact of the single market program (SMP) and the European monetary union (EMU) on the German banking sector. As a main result, the introduction of the EMU can be assessed as more important for the German banking system than the SMP because of the relative liberal conditions prior to the SMP. To maintain or enhance profitability in an environment of decreasing margins, all banks will increase their efforts to reduce costs. On the product side, the disintermediation process is expected to speed up. As a consequence, the traditional system of universal banks could be somewhat changed: A partial retreat of savings as well as cooperative banks from investment banking, accompanied by increasing market shares in the branch-based retail business. For commercial banks, the consultation-intense investment business is very attractive. On the retail sector, a specialization on direct banking allows for additional customers from abroad as well as for high growth rates in...