Accounting education for professionals in Germany — current state and new challenges

In comparison to other countries, the requirements on the education of professional auditors in Germany have been considered to be the toughest in the world. However, German professionals risk losing this position since there are countries which seem to adapt more quickly and appropriately to changes in the accounting environment.The first part of the paper provides a review of the current state of the education for qualified auditors in Germany with special reference to the according EU-Directives and IFAC-Rules. It is shown that there are various issues which have to be accounted for in order to meet the challenges of the future.The remainder of the paper focuses on challenges due to changes in the accounting and auditing environment, on challenges due to an enlargement of the scope of statutory audit and — finally — on challenges due to the need for diversification from auditing to assurance services.     

Zum Treuhänder des Sicherungsvermögens unter dem neuen Versicherungsaufsichtsgesetz – Auswirkungen der Solvency II-Umsetzung

This paper is about the consequences of the transposition of the Solvency II Directive into the new German insurance supervisory law (VAG 2016) on the trustee for monitoring of the guarantee assets. The trustee of the guarantee assets is a national security mechanism to protect policyholders in case of insolvency of their insurance undertaking. The previous German Regulation of Investments (AnlV) is not valid any more for insurance undertakings falling under Solvency II since 01.01.2016. Instead of legal investments rules insurance undertakings are now obliged to have a (written) internal investment policy, which is also the basis for monitoring of guarantee assets by the trustee. Challenges arise because of the clash of the accounting view (German local GAAP) and the market valuation view of Solvency II. Our analysis contributes to a better understanding of the interplay between unchanged legal provisions and the new economic, risk based perspective of Solvency II.     

The long-term impact of mergers and the emergence of a merger wave in pre-World-War I Germany

Using annual data on mergers for 35 leading German companies from 1870 to 1913, my study tries to explain the first merger wave that emerged 1898. My panel probit model that accounted for economies of scale, macroeconomic conditions, success of former mergers, and market structure revealed that previous mergers made subsequent mergers more likely. The propensity to merge was higher for larger companies that increased their market power. In the banking industry, managers imitated mergers, although these mergers were not successful, and hence followed the minimax regret principle. Rational information-based herding caused the serial dependency of mergers in other industries.     

State of the Art der betriebswirtschaftlichen Forschung: Etablierung des neuen Journals für Betriebswirtschaft

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Eco-Labeling and Horizontal Product Differentiation

This paper investigates the impact of eco-labels on the abatement of emissions in a market with horizontal product differentiation. A distinction is made between an end-of-pipe abatement method and a clean technology approach. In the former case underinvestment is likely to occur even if the marginal willingness to pay for abatement of consumers is equal to the social marginal benefit of abatement. The level of abatement depends on the number of firms and on the number of consumers. For a large market with few firms overinvestment in abatement is also possible. Clean technology abatement achieves a first best level regardless of market size if all consumers have a marginal willingness to pay for abatement equal to its social benefit.     

The impact of imperfect monitoring on the efficiency wage hypothesis

Zusammenfassung Es wird ein Arbeitsmarkt untersucht, in dem Arbeiter unterschiedliche Fähigkeiten aufweisen, die sie selbst, nicht aber potentielle Arbeitgeber kennen. Fähigere Arbeiter haben einen höheren Reservationslohn als weniger fähige. Wenn Unternehmer die wahren Fähigkeiten jedes einzelnen Beschäftigten auch im Laufe seiner Tätigkeit nicht feststellen können, so kann ein Gleichgewicht mit unfreiwilliger Arbeitslosigkeit existieren. Es wird gezeigt, daß bei kostspieliger und fehlerhafter Ex-post-Bewertung der Fähigkeiten die Möglichkeit unfreiwilliger Arbeitslosigkeit von der Wahl des Gleichgewichtskonzepts abhängt: Ein Nash-Gleichgewicht mit unfreiwilliger Arbeitslosigkeit existiert nicht, wohl aber ein Riley-Gleichgewicht.

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This research was started and most of it completed while I was visiting the Sonderforschungsbereich 303 at the University of Bonn. Financial support of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft is gratefully acknowledged. I wish to thank M. Hellwig for stimulating discussions as well as H. Duda, M. Nermuth, K. Podzceck, and a referee for helpful comments on an earlier draft, without, of course, implying that they bear any responsibility for the shortcomings of this paper.     

The desire for land: Strategic lending with adverse selection

This paper deals with a setting in which borrowers and lenders place different values on an asset that can be used as collateral. Under adverse selection, lenders may rationally choose credit contracts with the object of attracting a relatively risky group of clients, so raising their chances of gaining possession of the asset through default. Contracts of differing attractiveness to borrowers can also coexist in equilibrium. When an ‘inside’ and an ‘outside’ lender compete, the latter placing a lower value on the collateral, and their loanable funds are sufficiently limited, a separating equilibrium may exist in which the insider offers a contract which attracts risky borrowers, whereas the outsider's contract is aimed at a safer group. If loanable funds are ample, the only equilibrium will involve pooling contracts, but the insider may still offer more attractive contracts in an entry game.     

Does the merger paradox exist even without any regulations? Evidence from Germany in the pre-1914 period

This paper measures the market response triggered by merger announcements in an environment without regulations and without a strong separation of ownership and control in Germany. Based on event study methods applied to daily data and regression analyses, I evaluate whether the merger paradox existed, and how firm size, the way of financing a merger, and industry factors influenced the success of acquirers. Hence, my study can shed some light on commonly believed explanations for the bad performance of mergers. The whole portfolio of acquirers exhibited positive cumulated abnormal returns, which indicates a rejection of the merger paradox—but market values of some companies declined. Particularly, acquiring banks lost shareholder value, although the majority of mergers occurred in the banking industry. Caused by the new exchange law, banks were in a merger wave. Therefore, alternative explanations like the minimax-regret principle might explain why banks merged in spite of lacking success.     

Testing for seasonal integration and cointegration: The Austrian consumption income relationship

This paper analyzes the nature of seasonal fluctuations in quarterly observations for Austrian consumption and income data. We begin with univariate tests of the order of integration and then move on to tests of cointegration. Seasonally adjusted as well as raw data are used in these tests. in univariate tests, the outcome for seasonally adjusted and raw data is in line. The unit roots at the zero frequency found in the seasonally adjusted series are also present in the raw data. In bivariate tests, the results for seasonally adjusted and raw data differ. While we find cointegration at the zero frequency between consumption and income for seasonally adjusted series, this hypothesis is generally rejected for the raw data.