Habilitation von Dr. Erich Lamp in Mainz

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Exchange rate models and parameter variation: The case of the Dollar-Mark exchange rate

This paper is drawn from Chapter 3 of the author's doctoral dissertation at the University of Chicago (Wolff, 1985). He is very grateful to the members of his dissertation committee — Michael Mussa (Chairman), Joshua Aizenman, Robert Aliber, Jacob Frenkel, David Hsieh, John Huizinga, and Arnold Zellner — and to seminar participants at the University of Chicago, the London Business School and INSEAD for many helpful comments.     

Money demand in the euro area: new insights from disaggregated data

Conventional money demand specifications in the euro area have become unstable since 2001. We specify a money demand equation in deviations of individual euro area Member States variables from the euro area average and show that the income elasticity as well as the interest rate semi-elasticity remain stable. The corresponding deep parameters of the utility function have not changed fundamentally. Aggregate money demand instability does therefore not result from altered standard factors determining the preference for holding money. Instead, other factors determine the aggregate monetary overhang. Since monetary developments cannot easily be explained by changing preferences, they should be closely monitored as they may actually be a sign of other factors.     

A compound option approach to model the interrelation between banking crises and country defaults: The case of Hungary 2008

We analyze the Hungarian financial crisis of 2008 in a stochastic framework that advances structural credit risk models for country defaults: by applying compound option theory we consider payments for bailing-out the banking sector together with debt service payments in a joint crisis model. We estimate the model parameters by applying the time series maximum-likelihood approach of Duan (1994) on yield spreads of Hungarian Bonds. We find that difficulties in acquiring funds for debt servicing in combination with high outstanding debt triggered the crisis, rather than problems in the domestic banking sector. The estimated crisis probabilities dramatically rise during 2008.     

Survey Data and the Interest Rate Sensitivity of US Bank Stock Returns

In this paper, we provide empirical evidence on the interest rate sensitivity of the stock returns of the twenty largest US bank holding companies. The main contribution of the paper is the use of survey data to model the unexpected interest rate variable, which is an alternative approach to the existing literature. We find evidence of significant negative interest rate sensitivity during the early 1980s, and evidence of declining significance in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This result is also obtained when using the forecast errors of ARIMA processes to model the unexpected movement in the interest rate.     

Optimal Tariffs and Subsidies and Changes in Market Structure

The paper presents a unified treatment of optimal trade policy for a small country. The well‐known results for duopoly and competitive markets emerge as benchmark cases of the authors’ model. In addition, it is shown that changes in market structure have nonmonotonic effects on optimal tariffs. The results suggest that the recent reduction of tariffs in eastern Europe is consistent with welfare‐maximizing trade policy in response to the substantial changes in the market structure of these countries.     

Small‐Firm Performance: Modeling the Role of Product and Process Improvements*

Entrepreneurial and small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) firm performance is a complex, multifaceted construct that should be examined with an eye toward its complexity. Our research study seeks to accomplish this examination by proposing a conceptual model of SME performance with two distinct but related outcome dimensions—growth as one dimension and profitability as another. We propose hypotheses for relationships between four antecedent factor conditions— environmental hostility, firm size, innovation capability, and internationalization—and an SME's likelihood to pursue either product improvement or process improvement as their primary strategic orientation. Furthermore, we propose that an SME product improvement orientation likely has greater influence on growth and profit performance than will a process improvement orientation. The findings of the study suggest that internationalization and innovator position have a positive impact on new product and process improvements, while environmental hostility, internationalization, and product improvement have positive influences on growth as a performance dimension. In addition and as hypothesized, the product improvement orientation is positively associated with growth and in turn profitability, whereas the process improvement orientation showed no statistical relationship to growth and ultimately profitability.