Arbeitspapiere
 

Structural Vacancies (ERES 2008)
Konferenzpapier, Juni 2008

Motives and Non-economic reasons for Bank Mergers and Acquisitions
Arbeitspapier (zusammen mit Teresa Stahl), Oktober 2006
erschienen in: The Icfai University Journal of Bank Management, Vol. 8, No. 1, S. 7-30, Februar 2009

Abstract: The aim of our research was to identify non-economic reasons for bank mergers and substantiate their influence compared to economic reasons. We expand the current economic literature, which acknowledges the existence of personal motives and managerial self-interest, but mostly fails to proof their importance, by applying methods from psychological research. Personality inventories, interviews, and scenarios are used to investigate the relationship between selected motives (power, achievement, sensation seeking, and prestige) and decision-making behavior for 20 German bank managers and 40 subjects of a control group. A multiple regression analysis demonstrates the predictability of behavior according to the prominence of the four motives. Furthermore, the results support the conclusion that managers tend to accept great economic disadvantages in following their own motives.

The Real Estate Market Risk of Banks
 Arbeitspapier, Juni 2004
 
Abstract: Real estate lending is a risky business. There is ample international evidence of heavy bank losses or even failures that have resulted from defaulted real estate loans. It is especially during real estate crises that losses tend to rise dramatically, sometimes to the extent of endangering the banking system as a whole. Lenders do not appear to possess all the instruments required for managing all the risks inherent in real estate loans. One reason may be that the nature of real estate risks is not yet completely understood. Especially the real estate market risk, i.e., the risk arising from a market downturn (as opposed to the risk associated with an individual property), has not been fully researched and so is usually not adequately managed. This article sheds some light on the nature of the real estate market risk of financial institutions, provides evidence of its significance and describes the status quo and likely advances in risk management in this field. It is an update on an earlier paper by the author (see: Lausberg, 2001) and also examines what changes the New Basel Capital Accord, also known as Basel II, has brought about.