The Impact of Financial System Design: International Patterns in Historical Perspective

本项目的基本目标是帮助确定某些公司融资系统是否比其他系统更有效率或更有效。对普惠关系银行的好处的现代观点，主要来自对德国成功的工业化和二战后重建的观察。德国的成功故事，以及银行体系在这一成功中所扮演的角色，给许多美国经济学家、经济史学家和政策制定者留下了深刻的印象。然而，这位研究者和其他人最近的工作，对全能银行是德国工业化关键的传统观点提出了质疑。本项目在此基础上采取了数据收集和实证分析的新举措。NSF资金支持数据收集，清理和翻译以及研究者和德国学者之间合作工作的国际旅行。研究人员最终完成了一个数据库，其中包含了1895年至1912年间400家德国银行和公司的财务信息，这些信息主要是在以前的国家科学基金会资助下收集的。该项目通过将已公布的财务数据与公司记录进行比较，创建新的公司治理和银行关系衡量标准，收集股票市场数据，编制数据库公司子集的深入案例研究，以及收集非数据库公司的档案证据，加深了现有的公司层面信息。这些新数据补充了已公布的财务数据，并揭示了单个公司更详细的情况。研究者使用数据库来调查全能银行和关系型银行的经济影响。通过比较德国银行附属公司和独立公司的关系，研究回报率、投资、流动性约束、资本结构、新证券发行、管理层更替以及行业集中和勾结。普遍性是通过比较三个具有不同程度普遍性的经济体（德国、英国和美国）的银行业效率、企业融资成本以及长期增长和投资模式来解决的。该项目包括为本科生研究人员提供资金。参与该项目为本科生提供了一个宝贵的机会，可以学习公司金融、银行、公司治理、产业组织、经济增长和德国历史等许多主题，并获得更多关于学术研究方法的一般知识。研究人员还计划与德国弗赖堡大学经济学教授托马斯·格里格（Thomas Gehrig）就该项目的几个部分进行合作。同时，他正在向德国政府申请资助，以便进行更广泛的数据收集和分析。

The fundamental goal of this project is to help determine whether certain corporate financing systems perform more efficiently or effectively than others. Modern views of the benefits of universal, relationship banking arise largely from observation of the successful industrialization and post-World War II reconstruction of Germany. The German success story, and the supposed role of the banking system in that success, has made a deep impression on many American economists, economic historians, and policymakers. Recent work by the investigator and others, however, casts doubt on the traditional view of the universal banks as the linchpin of German industrialization. This project builds on this foundation with new initiatives for data collection and empirical analysis. NSF funding supports data collection, cleaning and translation as well as international travel for collaborative work between the investigator and German scholars.The investigator finalizes a database of financial information for 400 German banks and firms between 1895 and 1912 that was largely collected under a previous NSF grant. The project deepens the existing firm-level information by comparing published financial data to firm records, creating new measures of corporate governance and bank relationships, gathering stock market data, compiling in-depth case studies on a subset of the database firms, and gathering archival evidence on non-database firms. These new data augment the published financial data and reveal more detailed pictures of individual firms. The investigator uses the databases to investigate the economic impact of universal and relationship banking. Relationships are investigated by comparing bank-affiliated and independent firms within Germany-studying rates of return, investment, liquidity constraints, capital structure, new securities issues, managerial turnover, and concentration and collusion in industry. Universality is addressed by comparing banking sector efficiency, firm financing costs, and long-term patterns of growth and investment among three economies with varying degrees of universality: Germany, Great Britain, and the United States. The project includes funding for undergraduate researchers. Participating in this project offers undergraduates a valuable opportunity to learn about the many topics covered-corporate finance, banking, corporate governance, industrial organization, economic growth, and German history-as well as to gain more general knowledge of the methods of scholarly research. The investigator also plans to collaborate with Thomas Gehrig, Professor of Economics at the University of Freiburg, Germany, on several parts of the project. He is concurrently applying for funding from the German government in order to permit much more extensive data collection and analysis.