Foreign Currency Loans - Demand or Supply Driven?

Motivated by concerns over foreign currency exposures of banks in Emerging Europe, we examine the currency denomination of business loans made in Bulgaria during the period 2003-2007. We analyze a unique dataset including information on the requested and granted currency for more than hundred thousand loans granted by one bank to sixty thousand different firms. This data set allows us to disentangle demand-side from supply-side determinants of foreign currency loans. We find that 32% of the foreign currency loans disbursed in our sample were actually requested in local currency by the firm. Our analysis suggests that the bank lends in foreign currency, not only to less risky firms, but also when the firm requests a long-term loan and when the bank itself has more funding in euro. These results imply that foreign currency borrowing in Eastern Europe is not only driven by borrowers who try to benefit from lower interest rates but also by banks hesitant to lend longterm in local currency and eager to match the currency structure of their assets and liabilities.foreign currency debt, banking

Preferences for Health Insurance in Germany and the Netherlands – A Tale of Two Countries

This contribution contains an international comparison of preferences. Using two Discrete Choice Experiments (DCE), it measures willingness to pay for health insurance attributes in Germany and the Netherlands. Since the Dutch DCE was carried out right after the 2006 health reform, which made citizens explicitly choose a health insurance contract, two research questions naturally arise. First, are the preferences with regard to contract attributes (such as Managed-Care-type restrictions of physician choice) similar between the two countries? Second, was the information campaign launched by the Dutch government in the context of the reform effective in the sense of reducing status quo bias? Based on random-effects Probit estimates, these two questions can be answered as follows. First, while much the same attributes have positive and negative willingness to pay values in the two countries, their magnitudes differ, pointing to differences in preference structure. Second, status quo bias in the Netherlands is one-half of the German value, suggesting that Dutch consumers were indeed made to bear the cost of decision making associated with choice of a health insurance contract.preference measurement, willingness to pay, health insurance, discrete-choice experiments, health reform, Germany, Netherlands

Foreign Currency Loans - Demand or Supply Driven?

Motivated by current concerns over foreign currency exposures in emerging economies, we examine the currency denomination of business loans made in Bulgaria prior to the current crisis. We analyze information on the requested and granted currency for more than hundred thousand loans granted by one bank to sixty thousand different firms during the period 2003- 2007. This unique data set allows us to disentangle demand-side from supply-side determinants of foreign currency loans. We find that the bank in our sample often grants loans in foreign currency even when a firm requests a loan in local currency. The bank lends in foreign currency, not only to less risky firms, but also when the firm requested a large or long-term loan and after the bank itself received more funding in euro. These results suggest that foreign currency borrowing in Eastern Europe is not only be driven by borrowers who try to benefit from lower interest rates but may be partly supply-driven with banks hesitant to lend long-term in local currency and eager to match the currency structure of their assets and liabilities. --foreign currency debt,banking

Auswirkungen von Basel III auf die Zukunft der Kommunalfinanzierung

Die Kommunen profitieren derzeit von hohen Steuereinnahmen und niedrigen Kreditzinssätzen. Nach Angaben des Statistischen Bundesamts waren die Gewerbesteuereinnahmen im zweiten Quartal 2012 so hoch wie noch nie. Die positive Einnahmesituation vieler Gemeinden und Gemeindeverbände wird von sinkenden Zinsausgaben begleitet und könnte darüber hinwegtäuschen, dass viele Kommunen nach wie vor hoch verschuldet sind. Möglicherweise stellen die niedrigen Zinssätze - insbesondere für Kassenkredite - sogar einen Anreiz dar, noch höhere Kreditvolumina aufzunehmen, um von den günstigen Zinskonditionen zu profitieren. Indes ist anzunehmen, dass sich die Finanzierungsbedingungen der Kommunen infolge des Banken-Regelwerks Basel III zukünftig verschlechtern werden

The PHO2 family of ubiquitin conjugating enzymes in Arabidopsis thaliana and its contribution to plant programmed cell death

Programmed cell death (PCD) is essential for various developmental processes and stress responses in the life cycle of a plant. The ubiquitin-proteasome system has been shown to regulate multiple mechanisms with a suspected role in the initiation and execution of plant programmed cell death. However, only little is known about the exact function of enzymes involved in ubiquitylation during cell death responses. This thesis gives first insights into the molecular and physiological characteristics of the PHO2 family of ubiquitin conjugating enzymes in Arabidopsis thaliana and demonstrates the important role of these proteins during the programmed cell death response to abiotic and biotic stresses. The protein family consists of four members that are unusually large for ubiquitin conjugating enzymes and possess in addition to the characteristic UBC domain a long N-terminal extension and a C-terminal domain highly conserved throughout the plant kingdom. Two subgroups can be distinguished according to the homology in the N-terminal part: the two larger proteins PHO2 and PFU2 (PHO2-family ubiquitin conjugating enyzme 2) on the one hand and the two smaller ones PFU1 and PFU3 on the other. PHO2 and PFU2 were identified to be absent from the nucleus and restricted to the cytoplasm. PFU1 and PFU3 were shown to be present inside the nucleus. Only PFU1 could also be detected in the cytoplasm. Whereas PFU1 and PFU3 seem to be rather plant specific, homologues of PHO2 and PFU2 can be found throughout the whole eukaryotic kingdom, but are missing from the model organisms Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Schizosaccharomyces pombe. The closest mammalian homologue is E2-230K, which is shown to display both E2 and E3 function, but its exact function in the cell is still unknown. The more distantly related homologue BRUCE has been described to be an inhibitor of apoptosis. Complete knockout mutants could be identified for PHO2, PFU1 and PFU3, whereas the PFU2 transcript is only downregulated in the T-DNA insertion line analyzed in this thesis. Mutation of either PHO2, PFU1 or PFU2 leads to suppression of cell death caused by expressing a mutated form of ubiquitin in plants. Apart from this, pfu1 and pho2 mutants show less cell death symptoms than wild type plants under ozone treatment. In contrast, the pfu2 mutant line is less sensitive to nitric oxide treatment than wild type plants. In addition, the hypersensitive response to a bacterial pathogen is delayed in the pfu1 pho2 double mutant, suggesting that both proteins are functionally interdigitated. These findings show that the PHO2 family of ubiquitin conjugating enzymes is needed to initiate programmed cell death in response to various stresses presumably by sensingreactive oxygen species or reactive nitrogen species, which highly accumulate in the cell during PCD. Further experiments with recombinant PFU1 and PHO2 protein fragments revealed that especially the C-terminal domain of the proteins is highly insoluble. Various modifications of the constructs were needed to finally obtain a soluble PHO2 fragment containing the UBC and the C-terminal domain, which can be used in future biochemical assays to test the functionality of the ubiquitin conjugating enzymes and to solve the three-dimensional structure of the highly conserved C-terminal domain

Zum Streit um die "schwarze Null"

Während die Bundesregierung ihren Willen bekundet, an einem ausgeglichenen Bundeshaushalt für 2015 festzuhalten, sprechen sich viele Politiker und auch manche Ökonomen gegen die auf die "schwarze Null" orientierte Haushaltspolitik aus. Aus Sicht des Deutschen Steuerzahlerinstituts ist die "schwarze Null" kein Selbstzweck, sondern die Chance, erstmals nach 1969 wieder einen Haushalt ohne Neuverschuldung vorzulegen. Die Vorzeichen könnten nicht besser stehen: Die Steuereinnahmen sind hoch, das Zinsniveau ist niedrig. [...

Harmonized histories: manual for the preparation of comparative fertility and union histories

This document describes the standardization process of the Harmonized Histories. The Harmonized Histories is a comparative database of rich reproductive and union histories from surveys conducted in a number of countries in Europe. Given that birth and union data has been collected in a number of ways in different surveys, it has been very difficult to conduct cross-national analyses of recent union and fertility behavior over time. A team of researchers called the Nonmarital Childbearing Network has cleaned and standardized the surveys according to guidelines set out in this manual. Currently, the database includes data from the Generations and Gender Surveys (GGSs) in Italy, Germany, France, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and Russia; the 2003 Dutch Fertility and Family Survey; and the British Household Panel Survey.Europe, family formation, fertility, surveys