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

该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或更有效。 现代观点的好处，普遍的，关系银行主要来自观察成功的工业化和二战后重建的德国。 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、经济历史学家和政策制定者留下了深刻的印象。 然而，研究者和其他人最近的工作对全能银行作为德国工业化关键的传统观点提出了质疑。 本项目在此基础上开展新的数据收集和实证分析举措。 NSF的资金支持数据收集，清理和翻译，以及国际旅行的研究者和德国学者之间的合作工作。研究者完成了一个数据库的财务信息，为400家德国银行和公司之间的1895年和1912年，主要是收集在以前的NSF赠款。 该项目通过将公布的财务数据与公司记录进行比较，创建公司治理和银行关系的新措施，收集股票市场数据，汇编关于数据库公司子集的深入案例研究，以及收集关于非数据库公司的档案证据，深化现有的公司一级的信息。 这些新数据增加了已公布的财务数据，并揭示了单个公司更详细的情况。研究人员使用这些数据库来调查全能银行和关系银行的经济影响。 通过比较德国境内的银行附属和独立企业的研究回报率，投资，流动性约束，资本结构，新的证券发行，管理人员的流动性，集中度和勾结行业的关系进行了研究。 通过比较具有不同普遍性程度的三个经济体（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，讨论了普遍性问题。 该项目包括为本科研究人员提供资金。 参加这个项目为本科生提供了一个宝贵的机会，了解所涵盖的许多主题-公司财务，银行，公司治理，产业组织，经济增长和德国历史-以及获得更多的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克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金，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.