Caroline Fohlin

The rise of interlocking directorates in imperial Germany

This paper focuses on the institution of interlocking directorates between universal banks and industrial firms in the Kaiserreich (1871-1914) and demonstrates that such formalized relationships were unusual prior to 1900. The investigation indicates further that there was a marked increase in bank representation at firms-both in the share of firms involved in such relationships and in the number of joint directors-around the turn of the century. Finally, the work suggest a number of explanations for the pattern of bank relationships that emerges.Bankers are thought by many to have played an important role as entrepreneurs and overseers in German industrialization, identifying promising new industries and investments, offering managerial advice to their client firms, and monitoring the use of investment funds. The nGerman joint-stock credit banks were, in Gerschenkron’s words, the ‘paragon of the type of the universal bank’. In the writings of Hilferding, Riesser, Jeidels, Wallich, and, more recently, Gerschenkron, the idea has persisted that German universal banks fostered close, long-term relationships with industry and that these associations facilitated a hands-on style of financing. Gerschenkron, among others, claimed that ‘the German banks, and with them the Austrian and Italian banks, established the nclosest possible relations with industrial enterprises’.

Trading Costs in Early Securities Markets: The Case of the Berlin Stock Exchange 1880-1910

Based on daily prices (amtliche Kurse) we estimate effective spreads of securities traded at the Berlin Stock Exchange in 1880, 1890, 1900 and 1910. Several extensions of the Roll measure are applied. We find surprisingly tight effective spreads for the historical data, comparable with similar measures of the MDAX and DAX at the end of the 20th century.

Regulation, taxation and the development of the German universal banking system, 1884 1913

Previous researchers argue that the legal and regulatory environment helped shape the German financial system in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, with particular emphasis on the damaging effects of the stock-exchange law of 1896. This paper finds that the stock exchange law of 1896 exerted little measurable impact on the growth and concentration of the universal banking system or on the business turnover of universal banks relative to securities markets. The paper also shows that the English commercial banking sector and the German universal banking sector underwent similar movements toward concentration between 1884 and 1920 (both accelerating after 1912), despite no corresponding regulatory changes in England–further suggesting that consolidation of universal banking resulted from factors other than the 1896 law.

Economic, Political, and Legal Factors in Financial System Development: International Patterns in Historical Perspective

Financial systems are often described either as bank-based, universal, and relational or as market-based, specialized, and arms-length; and for many years academics and policymakers have debated the relative merits of these different types of systems. This paper inquires into the underlying causes of financial system structure and development. Older theories dictated that financial institutions developed in relationship to the economys level of development. Newer work has brought political and legal factors to the fore: hypothesizing specific relationships between banking structure and state centralization and between financial development and legal tradition. This study classifies countries by type of financial system, and in doing, indicates that few banking systems fit the extreme paradigms of universal-relationship or specialized-arms length banking. On the other hand, despite several cases of temporary upheaval, and recent widespread movement toward conglomeration, banking system structure has remained remarkable stable over the last 100 to 150 years. Economic factors in the late nineteenth century provide relatively strong explanatory power for financial system development, market orientation, and banking structure at the eve of World War I and in the present day. Banking specialization and market orientation appear strongly associated with legal tradition, though it seems more likely that the three characteristics are jointly determined or that the legal system variable simply proxies for a close or historical tie to the exporter of many political-economic institutions, England. Legal orientation exerted little impact on financial institution growth at the turn of the century and provides no consistent prediction of real economic growth rates over the past 150 years. Finally, political structure relates significantly to market orientation but not to banking system design or legal tradition. Nonetheless, many individual country histories make it clear that political forces played important roles in shaping regulations that in turn altered the course of financial institutions and markets. The results here simply suggest that these political forces appeared inconsistently and had no traceable, uniform relationship to the overall political system in place in the nineteenth century. The results underscore two principal themes: the weight of history in determining the growth and design of financial institutions and markets, and the importance of idiosyncratic forces that buffet institutions over time. Despite obvious connections among political, legal, economic, and financial institutions, robust, long-term, causal relationships often prove to be elusive.

The Balancing Act of German Universal Banks and English Deposit Banks, 1880-1913

This article uses aggregate bank balance sheet data to investigate systematic differences in the financial makeup and activities of universal and specialised banks over the decades leading up to World War One. The results show that British and German banks structured assets similarly, but German banks held more liquid assets relative to short?term liabilities. Furthermore, German banks apparently owned few industrial equities and did so mainly because of insufficient markets for new issues. The findings add to recent work suggesting that the commonly perceived gulf between British and German banking exaggerates the differences between systems and their effects.

Has the Cross-Section of Average Returns Always Been the Same? Evidence from Germany, 1881-1913

The cross-section of average annual returns on German common stock in the period of 1881-1913 exhibits several of the patterns that have been observed in more recent U.S. data. Market beta is hardly important, and its explanatory power is swamped by size and the ratio of book value to market value. A book-to-market risk measure (covariance with a portfolio long in high book-to-market firms and short in low book-to-market firms) has no effect on the explanatory power of the book-to-market characteristic. But the size effect appears to be caused by selection bias in the sample. And the book-to-market effect is opposite that of the recent U.S. experience (and, hence, can certainly not be attributed to selection bias). Finally, a momentum portfolio constructed on the basis of the error of the basic 3-characteristic model (market beta, size and book-to-market) does not generate significant returns. These findings highlight the variability in the power of certain characteristics in explaining the cross section of average returns.

Asymmetric Information, Market Power, and the Underpricing of New Stock Issues in Germany, 1882–1892

Investors in new stock issues in Germany in the 1880s experienced low spreads between the price they paid for stock and the price at which they could sell the stock in the market. Stock issuing companies paid substantial fees to underwriting banks, and these costs increased with the underwriters market share. Banks faced lower issuing costs than did nonfinancial firms. These patterns are consistent with a situation in which underwriters exploited their access to better information (agency problems) and had market power, but do not support the supposed lemons problems that motivated the imposition of stringent regulations in 1896.

How Important Historically Were Financial Systems for Growth in the U.K., U.S., Germany, and Japan?

The case studies for each country survey the literature on the role of their financial systems in their development. The sources of finance for industrial development include (i) banks, (ii) securities markets, (iii) internal finance, (iv) alternative sources of finance such as angel finance, trade credit, families, and friends, and (v) governments. All four countries had sophisticated financial systems and all four grew successfully. The fact that they had different financial systems suggests that if there is an optimal financial structure for a country it does not lead to a significantly greater level of growth than other possible structures. The experiences of the four countries considered suggest that a variety of financial structures can lead to high rates of growth in real per capita GDP.

Banking Industry Structure, Competition, and Performance: Does Universality Matter?

By studying the German universal banking system in the pre-World War I period, in comparison with its American and British counterparts, this paper investigates whether universality (the combination of commercial and investment banking services) influences banking industry concentration, levels of market power, or financial performance of banks. The short answer is no. First, given that the UKs specialized commercial banking sector was structured very similarly to the German universal industrial banking sector, and that neither system was extremely concentrated in the pre-war era, the paper argues that universality does not necessarily or uniquely propagate concentration. Second, on average, German universal banks behaved no less competitively than their American counterparts in the provision of loan services. Structural price markup models, as well as reduced-form Rosse-Panzar tests, demonstrate little deviation from competitive pricing in either country. The findings therefore indicate that universality does not lead to appreciable market power, in either an absolute or a relative sense. These same results also imply that banking industry concentration, at least up to the moderately high levels found in Germany, does not in itself produce anti-competitive behavior. The empirical results, though contradictory to common wisdom about German universal banking, are easily motivated by the theoretical literature in industrial organization. Finally, estimates of returns on equity and on assets suggest only slight international differences in average returns over extended periods, but large deviations in individual years. Adjusting for prevailing rates on government bonds, commercial loans, or commercial deposits narrows the gaps further. Universality is not linked with superior profitability, whether the hypothesized source is efficiency (economies of scope) or monopoly power. These three sets of findings may assuage fears that deregulation in American banking could lead to excessive concentration and therefore collusive behavior. At the same time, the results may lower hopes of significant efficiency gains from broadening the scope of services.

IPO Underpricing in Two Universes: Berlin, 1882-1892, and New York, 1998-2000

Underpricing of new issues relates negatively to underwriter reputation in studies covering the US during the early 1970s until 1997 but positively in one study of IPOs from 1992-4. This paper investigates whether IPO underpricing depends on the organization of the financial system, whether underwriter reputation is a consistent indicator of firm quality and therefore (negatively) of underpricing, and whether this reputation effect also appears in completely different contexts. The study also looks for truncation in the observed returns distributions that may hint at price support activities on the part of underwriters. To answer these questions, the study presents evidence on new issues of stocks and their one-day returns in the Berlin market of 1882-1892 along with parallel data from the New York markets of 1998-2000. n nDespite what appear to be major institutional differences between the US and Germany, underpricing and its correlates are remarkably similar in the two cases: median underpricing is nearly the same in the two samples. Strikingly, the link between underwriter reputation and underpricing is positive both in the U.S. of recent years and in Berlin of the 1880s. This finding is in stark contrast with those for the US in the 1970s and 80s. The trade off between prices and rationing faced by underwriters might result in this instability in the reputation-underpricing link. Finally, the observed distributions of first-day returns for both markets display marked skewness toward positive values ? a pattern that is consistent with left censoring and quite possibly with underwriter price supports. n nThese results support a number of conclusions: first, either underwriter reputation is a poor signal of firm quality or firm quality is positively related to underpricing in certain circumstances; second, the largest and most prestigious underwriters may exert market power or at least provide more or better service in return for their higher indirect costs; third, the relationship between underwriter reputation or market share and underpricing clearly varies dramatically over time and across countries; and finally, financial system design?in particular, universal and relationship banking?may have little impact on the performance of new issues markets. Given the German results, one should conclude either that significant information asymmetries exist despite universality and formal relationships in the banking system or that information problems are unnecessary for the emergence of underpricing.