Wolfgang Breuer

• RWTH Aachen University

This paper jointly analyzes a traditional and a behavioral concept to explain household debt portfolio choice. The traditional approach explores the role of time preferences on household debt maturity in a theoretical model and a numerical analysis. We derive a positive relationship between the long-term discount factor δ and the optimal maturity o...

In this chapter we analyze negative reciprocity theoretically as well as experimentally. Although the reciprocity model of Dufwenberg and Kirchsteiger [Games and Economic Behavior 47 (2004) 268] is often cited in the literature to justify why people punish unkind behavior, we show that this model is not able to predict punishments in ultimatum game...

We study trustors’ expectations in the binary-choice trust game and find that reference point dependency affects trustors’ willingness to trust. The more that people expect others to be trust-worthy, the warier they are of being disappointed and the less willing they are to trust. We extend previous research by considering social value orientation...

Academic interest in cultural influences on financial decision making has risen in the last decade leading to a considerable number of literature contributions in this field. However, the discipline of Cultural Finance is a very young and yet unstructured research niche with its added value being rather opaque than clearly defined. In this paper, w...

This paper addresses the relation between research performance measurement based on journal quality assessment on the one hand and direct citations on the ether hand as a function of the age of the article or the respective author. If the connection between both measures of research output becomes stronger with growing age of the article or author,...

Mitarbeit am GABLER Wirtschaftslexikon, 18. Auflage 2014 Der Klassiker der Wirtschaftsliteratur: Zu Betriebswirtschaft, Volkswirtschaft, Wirtschaftsrecht, Recht und Steuern lässt das Gabler Wirtschaftslexikon keine Fragen offen. Denn mit mehr als 26.000 Stichwörtern offeriert es nicht nur quantitativ die größte Zusammenstellung relevanter Wirtschaf...

We examine how cultural preferences impact the financing decision of firms. In particular, we hypothesize that the degree of long-term orientation in a country is positively related to the use of bank finance. Based on a thorough theoretical investigation and an extensive empirical analysis using a large, worldwide dataset, we find strong support f...

Despite a considerable premium on equity with respect to risk free assets, many households do not own stocks. We ask why the prevalence of stockholding is so limited. We focus on individuals’ attitudes towards risk and identify relevant factors that affect the willingness to take financial risks. Our empirical evidence contradicts standard portfoli...

Chen et al. [Quant. Finance, 2011, 11, 1439–1447] prove that 11 specific reward-to-risk performance measures are all monotonic transformations of the Sharpe ratio, when the underlying random returns of assets to be combined are multivariate elliptically distributed. Schuhmacher and Eling [J. Bank. Financ., 2012, 36, 2077–2082] show that any so-call...

This study enhances the growing research field of Cultural Finance by analyzing the relationship between cultural value types – in particular Autonomy and Embeddedness – and the corporate debt choice of either bank or bond financing. We derive our hypotheses from a slight modification and re-interpretation of the Chemmanur and Fulghieri (1994) appr...

We propose that there are three determinants of sender behavior in trust games: Beliefs re-garding the amounts returned, risk aversion, and reciprocity. Particularly, we are interested in the role of reciprocity because the possibility of negative expected reciprocal utility may lead to betrayal-averse sender behavior, i.e. to a situation where rec...

This article studies the measurement of risk and time preferences for individual decision-making. We empirically compare the usefulness of several measures of risk tolerance and time discounting, and evaluate how these variables relate to financial decisions. The variables are based on a hand-collected sample of more than 1,000 individuals across 9...

One of the main factors increasing the danger of financial crises is the formation of an asset price bubble. Thus, an important contribution financial theory can deliver to reduce the risk of financial crises is to endow investors with firm valuation models that are carefully calibrated to avoid excessive overvaluation. However, according to Jensen...

In summer 2007, the Securities and Exchange Commission published an online tool with information on firms doing business in State Sponsor of Terrorism countries. We take sides with those arguing that for moral reasons, investors will have traded on the information provided in the tool by selling stocks of mentioned firms. Contrary to our expectatio...

Grundsätzlich ist es mit der Ermittlung des Kapitalbedarfs einer Unternehmung natürlich nicht getan. Denn in der Regel gibt es verschiedene Möglichkeiten, den unternehmerischen Kapitalbedarf zu decken, und es stellt sich deswegen die Frage, welche der möglichen Finanzierungsformen als beste anzusehen ist.

Die Irrelevanzergebnisse des vierten Kapitels basierten entscheidend auf der Annahme gegebener stochastischer Einzahlungsüberschüsse und damit – bei Abstraktion von finanzierungsabhängigen Steuern und Insolvenzkosten – eines gegebenen Investitionsprogramms der Unternehmung. Zulässig war diese Annahme wegen der Voraussetzung eines vollkommenen Kapit...

Der Beitrag von Modigliani und Miller aus dem Jahre 1958 wird in der Literatur häufig als Beginn der modernen Finanzierungstheorie schlechthin bezeichnet. Tatsächlich kann die Bedeutung dieses Beitrags für alle nachfolgenden Diskussionen finanzierungstheoretischer Fragen kaum überschätzt werden.

Der Begriff „Behavioral Finance“ scheint zurzeit in aller Munde zu sein. In kaum einer anderen ökonomischen Teildisziplin hat die Idee, beschränkte Rationalitäten von Entscheidungsträgern zu berücksichtigen, so viel Niederschlag gefunden wie in der betrieblichen Finanzwirtschaftslehre. Den Ausgangspunkt bilden dabei die Erkenntnisse von zahlreichen...

Ungefähr zeitgleich mit den ersten Beiträgen zu Hidden-information-Problemen im Zusammenhang mit unternehmerischen Finanzierungsentscheidungen erschienen die ersten Ansätze, in denen Hidden-action-Probleme unternehmerischer Finanzierungs- und Investitionsentscheidungen analysiert wurden. Als bahnbrechend lassen sich hierbei insbesondere die Arbeite...

Bevor ab dem dritten Kapitel eine Diskussion der Motive für den Einsatz verschiedener Finanzierungsformen erfolgen kann, werden im vorliegenden Kapitel zunächst verschiedene Finanzierungsformen in systematischer Weise erörtert. Im Abschnitt 1 wird der zentrale Begriff des Finanzierungstitels eingeführt. Ferner werden Eigenschaften von Finanzierungs...

Gegenstand dieses Lehrbuchs war es, in die Theorie der Unternehmensfinanzierung einzuführen. Die besondere Problematik dieser Fragestellung ergibt sich daraus, dass bei vollkommenem Kapitalmarkt sämtliche unternehmerischen Finanzierungsentscheidungen als gleichwertig erscheinen, echte Finanzierungs„probleme“ sich daher nur bei Vorliegen von Kapital...

Wie bereits zum Ende des vorhergehenden Kapitels angedeutet, erkannte man Mitte der achtziger Jahre des letzten Jahrhunderts, dass Finanzierungsmaßnahmen insbesondere auch dazu genutzt werden können, sich gegenüber Konkurrenten auf den Absatzmärkten glaubwürdig an bestimmte Verhaltensweisen zu binden. Aus diesem Gedanken ergibt sich eine Reihe inte...

Gemäß der Diskussion des Theorems von der Irrelevanz unternehmerischer Finanzierungsentscheidungen für den Marktwert der betreffenden Unternehmung soll als erster Ansatzpunkt für eine Begründung der Relevanz von Finanzierungsmaßnahmen im Lichte der Ausführungen von Modigliani und Miller (1958) auf die Konsequenzen finanzierungsabhängiger Steuern un...

Mit dem vorhergehenden Kapitel ist die Präsentation der verschiedenen Funktionen der Unternehmensfinanzierung abgeschlossen. In dem abschließenden Kapitel dieses Lehrbuchs soll nunmehr dargelegt werden, wie man auf Basis der Finanzierungsfunktionen eine auch praktisch bedeutsame qualitative Wertung der verschiedenartigsten Instrumente vornehmen kan...

In order to explain contributions in public goods games, we propose a new model which extends that of Dufwenberg and Kirchsteiger (2004), where subjects are assumed to have either reciprocal or selfish preferences. To explain equilibrium contribution levels different from zero, we use the widely accepted fact that subjects’ beliefs typically have a...

Previous literature on cash management has revealed that cash holdings are treated like an insurance policy against liquidity shocks that limit future profitable investments. In a theoretical model, we analyze how investors’ attitude towards uncertain investment returns affects the valuation of cash and the amount of cash holdings. A panel analysis...

We study a model that relates dividend payout policy to behavioral issues based on the ideas of mental accounting. A panel analysis across 31 countries and over 46,000 firm-years demonstrates that our model hypotheses can be verified empirically. Our paper seems to be the first that highlights empirically in a straightforward way the relevance of b...

We show analytically under quite general conditions that time-varying implied rates of return based on analysts’ earnings forecasts are only a downward biased estimator for future expected one-period returns and therefore not suited for computing market risk premia in order to resolve the equity premium puzzle. The extent of this bias is substantia...

In summer 2007, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) published an online tool with information on firms doing business in State Sponsor of Terrorism countries. We take sides with those arguing that for moral reasons, investors will have traded on the information provided in the tool by selling stocks of mentioned firms. Contrary to our expe...

Using an event-study framework, we find that announcements of firm withdrawal from countries designated as State Sponsors of Terrorism are on average associated with a statistically significant 1.23% increase in firm value. Abnormal returns are positively associated with US domicile, the intensity of a firm’s engagement in a designated country, the...

This paper addresses the issue of whether research performance measurement based on journal quality assessment may serve as an indicator for future citation success in business administration. In this context, journal quality is determined according to the approach of the German newspaper Handelsblatt (HB) and according to the so-called VHB-Jourqua...

Dieser Aufsatz leitet die Notwendigkeit eines eigenständigen For-schungsbereichs her, in dem Probleme und Lösungsansätze beschrieben werden sollen, die im Zusammenhang mit ultralanglebigen Investitionen (ULLIs) entstehen. Wir definieren eine In-vestition als ultralanglebig wenn sie Konsequenzen für den Entscheider selber oder für andere Betroffene...

Using modified versions of the Domain-Specific Risk-Taking (DOSPERT) scale, we conduct surveys among German and Chinese university students. Our tests confirm previous findings that risk taking is indeed domain-specific. More importantly, our results show that differences in risk behavior are attributable more to perceived risk than to expected ben...

Public authority interventions are a justified means to remedy market failures. We apply this idea in the context of urban development projects by analysing the three main market imperfections, namely external effects, imperfect competition and incomplete information. For (combinations of) the three types of imperfections, we derive whether funding...

In contrast to previous studies, we compare intertemporal preferences in different frames with the help of choice tasks instead of willingness-to-pay tasks. To this end, we examine differences in choice patterns between delay and speedup frames and refer to these differences as time framing effects. Time framing effects are only strong for negative...

Previous literature has shown that in choice tasks with disclosed effective interest rates, some discounting anomalies such as hyperbolic discounting might disappear. In the following paper, we show that another discounting anomaly called size effect is still persistent in such experimental tasks. Subsequently, we discuss the empirical implications...

This article analyzes empirically the relevance of direct measures for incentive problems in German venture capital (VC) financial contracting, and investigates whether differences in experience or ownership structure across firms remain relevant even for given realizations of direct measures of incentive problems. It also asks whether risk percept...

With the introduction of the JESSICA (Joint European Support for Sustainable Investments in City Areas) Initiative, the European Commission aimed at strongly enhancing investments in urban areas to meet the steadily increasing requirements, arising from urbanization, for European cities. One major challenge now is to find out where the establishmen...

First, we show the equivalence of loans and grants as a means of subsidizing urban development projects in a perfect capital market setting. However, with capital markets being imperfect, redeemable loans may serve as a credible commitment device in order to overcome problems of asymmetric information between public authorities and private investor...

Comparing cities by indicators from numerous topics of urban life is crucial for policy decisions such as the funding allocation for urban development. Simply adding up a high number of indicators to one single index evokes reasonable criticism due to opacity and very limited possibilities of interpretation. Nevertheless, the same arguments can be...

We investigate equity holdings of two supposedly norm conscious investor types in firms with ties to countries designated as State Sponsors of Terrorism. These investor types are pension and endowment funds as well as US investors in general. Results indicate that pension and endowment funds are significantly less likely to own a majority stake in...

In a series of cross-country comparisons, we show that national culture is statistically significant in differentiating countries with different corporate governance systems. Using the Schwartz cultural value model and data on corporate governance systems, we analyze the impact of national culture on six dimensions of corporate governance. Countrie...

We extend existing research in cultural economics and offer a comprehensive analysis on the impact of culture on the structuring of business systems. In a series of cross-country comparisons, we show that national culture is statistically significant in determining the main business systems practiced in a country. Using the Schwartz cultural value...

In a series of cross-country comparisons, we show that national culture has a considerable impact on the characteristics of household finance. Using the Schwartz cultural value model and data on household finance, we analyze the impact of national culture on the use of deposits, equities, debt securities, life insurance, and pension funds in househ...

Real estate research has a much longer tradition in Anglo-Saxon countries than in Germany. From a (German) research perspective, real estate with its core subfield real estate finance was rather a research niche in the past. However, its relevance is likely to rise in the future. This might not only be due to the subprime crisis. With real estate l...

This special issue offers an interesting overview of the status quo of (German) research in real estate finance. It might also contribute to real estate research moving from a research niche closer to the center of academic interest.

Real estate research has a much longer tradition in Anglo-Saxon countries than in Germany. From a (German) research perspective, real estate with its core subfield real estate finance was rather a research niche in the past. However, its relevance is likely to rise in the future. This might not only be due to the subprime crisis. With real estate l...

We present a citation-based analysis of the most important journals on real estate and real estate finance over a time period from 1986 to 2010. For each year, those three articles with the highest number of citations according to Google Scholar are identified. A thorough analysis of all 75 selected articles reveals that the focus of interest has b...

We investigate the influence of national culture on takeover activity in a cross-disciplinary study across nations. Cultural differences are measured with the individualism index developed by Hofstede (2001), which is related to overconfidence. Overconfident managers overestimate their ability to create value through mergers and acquisitions. We ar...

We test the extent and determinants of bias effects of the arithmetic as well as the geometric mean estimator and the estimator of Cooper (1996) regarding discount rate estimation for firm valuation by way of a bootstrap approach for thirteen different countries. The Cooper estimator is preferable only for firms with small growth rates of future ex...

We present a citation-based analysis of the most important journals on real estate and real estate finance over a time period from 1986 to 2010. For each year, those three articles with the highest number of citations according to Google Scholar are identified. A thorough analysis of all 75 selected articles reveals that the focus of interest has b...

This article jointly analyses a behavioural and a cultural concept to explain household debt portfolio choice. The behavioural approach explores the role of time preferences on household debt maturity in a theoretical model and a numerical analysis. We derive a positive relationship between the long-term discount factor δ and the optimal maturity o...

Gegenstand dieses Buchs war die Erörterung der theoretischen Grundlagen der modernen Portfoliotheorie vor dem Hintergrund der Möglichkeiten ihrer praktischen Anwendung. Dabei wurde grundlegend zwischen kapitalmarktorientierten und partialanalytischen Ansätzen unterschieden. Im Rahmen der kapitalmarktorientierten Ansätze wurde die Betrachtung auf ar...

Das vorliegende Lehrbuch bildet den ersten Teil einer auf zwei Bände angelegten Gesamtdarstellung der theoretischen Grundlagen des modernen Portfoliomanagements. Damit geht es generell um die Frage, wie ein Investor seine verfügbaren finanziellen Mittel zweckmäßigerweise auf einem Kapitalmarkt anlegen sollte. Sachgerecht beantwortet werden kann die...

This article presents an economic efficiency analysis of solar chimney power plants by calculating their net present value in comparison to that of conventional coal-fired power stations. The derivation of an appropriate discount rate for each technology should take into account the different riskiness of the respective cash flow streams. In an app...

Zentraler Gegenstand der Portfoliotheorie ist die Entwicklung von Handlungsempfehlungen für die Portfolioselektion. Es wird die für den (privaten oder professionellen) Portfoliomanager relevante Frage untersucht, wie dieser „vernünftigerweise“ Portfolios von Finanzierungstiteln zusammenstellen sollte. Zu diesem Zweck müssen zunäc hst Zielkriterien...

Im vorhergehenden Kapitel III wurden allgemeine Gleichgewichtsüberlegungen für einen vollkommenen Kapitalmarkt angestellt, und es wurde versucht, die dadurch gewonnenen Erkenntnisse über die Eigenschaften gleichgewichtiger Wertpapierpreise für Zwecke des Portfoliomanagements einzusetzen. Konkret ging esum die Ausnutzung von Arbitragemöglichkeiten....

Nachdem im Kapitel II erläutert worden ist, wie auf der Grundlage des Erwartungsnutzenprinzips unterschiedliche Investorpräferenzen durch die Voraussetzung verschiedener Nutzenfunktionen abgebildet werden können, soll in diesem Kapitel von den konkreten Risikopräferenzen der Marktteilnehmer abstrahiert und ausschließlich die wenig einschränkende An...

Die ganze Welt der Wirtschaft: Betriebswirtschaft, Volkswirtschaft, Wirtschaftsrecht, Recht und Steuern in 8 Bänden. Das Gabler Wirtschaftslexikon vermittelt Ihnen die Fülle verlässlichen Wirtschaftswissens Aktuell, kompetent, zuverlässig Jetzt in der aktualisierten und erweiterten 17. Auflage Das Gabler Wirtschaftslexikon lässt in den Themenbere...

In a series of cross-country comparisons, we show that national culture is statistically significant in differentiating countries with different corporate governance systems. Using the Schwartz cultural value model and data on corporate governance systems, we analyze the impact of national culture on six dimensions of corporate governance. Countrie...

The requirement of existing utility with positive first derivative only makes it possible to derive a restricted two-fund separation theorem for portfolio selection problems with HARA utility replacing the original separation theorem of Cass and Stiglitz (1970). We use our findings for a brief re-examination of the asset allocation puzzle of Canner...

Assuming a demand-side point of view, i.e., the view of owner-managers of small and medium enterprises (SME), we identify the drivers and inhibitors of the utilisation of private equity. Subsequently, we test these using survey data. Intention to finance with private equity explains the variations in actual private equity utilisation (R² = 31 %). A...

Especially against the background of a Europe growing together more and more and in times of striking globalization, an emphasis of culture as an explanatory determinant in the context of economic issues would seem particularly attractive. This study intends to pursue this line of thought and to proclaim a new, autonomous discipline: Cultural Finan...

We examine Google Scholar as a potential basis for the evaluation of Research output in German business administration. As German business administration relies heavily on publications in books and is moreover characterized by a high relevance of publications in German, citation analyses on the basis of the ISI web of science are not very helpful....

We examine theoretically and experimentally a certain class of new financial instruments which are designed as lotteries on the outcome of prominent sports events like the Soccer World Cup 2006. From a theoretical point of view, sports betting products may be superior to a fixed rate investment because of heterogeneous expectations, risk-loving beh...

We show analytically under quite general conditions that implied rates of return based on analysts' earnings forecasts are only a downward biased estimator for future expected one-period returns and therefore not suited for computing market risk premia. The extent of this bias is substantial as verified by a bootstrap approach. We present an altern...

This study enhances the growing research field of Cultural Finance by analyzing the relationship between cultural value types – in particular Autonomy and Embeddedness – and the corporate debt choice of either bank or bond financing. We derive our hypotheses from a slight modification and re-interpretation of the Chemmanur and Fulghieri (1994) appr...

We examine theoretically and experimentally a certain class of new financial instruments which are designed as lotteries on the outcome of prominent sports events like the Soccer World Cup 2006. From a theoretical point of view, sports betting products may be superior to a fixed rate investment because of heterogeneous expectations, risk-loving beh...

We consider investors with mean-variance-skewness preferences who aim at selecting one out of F different funds and combining it optimally with the riskless asset and direct stock holdings. Direct stock holdings are either exogenously or endogenously determined. In our theoretical section, we derive and discuss several performance measures for the...

We empirically investigate possible reasons for successful syndications in private equity transactions. To this end, we analyze the answers of 115 private equity firms regarding relevant resources of potential syndication partners. Based on structural equation modeling we find that only three out of six main resources of potential syndication partn...

In an asymmetric information context with bounded rationality, investors’ loss aversion, mental accounting and buy-and-hold behavior may create opportunities for good-type firms to signal their project quality by choosing lower issuance prices at rights offerings than bad-type firms do. Bad firms are prevented from imitating better ones, as their d...

Special reimbursements for creditors in the case of the premature redemption of mortgaged loans are called prepayment penalties. They have been a controversially discussed topic in Germany for the last decade. This is mainly due to the fact that the European Union judges German prepayment penalties as too high compared to those in other European co...

Die Einrichtung von Shared-Services-Centern als Organisationsmodell gewinnt in Konzernen und großen Unternehmen zunehmend an Bedeutung. Der Begriff ‚Shared Services‘ beschreibt zunächst nichts anderes als gemeinsam genutzte Dienstleistungen. Hintergrund der Entstehung dieses organisatorischen Ansatzes waren vor allem Kostenüberlegungen. Dezentralis...

Der Rolle der Finanzfunktion in Unternehmen kommt in den letzten Jahren eine stetig steigende Bedeutung zu, der Finanzvorstand avanciert zum wichtigsten Ratgeber des Vorstandsvorsitzenden.1 Als Auslöser für eine derartige Finance Transformation, d. h. die strategische Positionierung und Reorganisation des Finanz- und Rechnungswesens, kann die wachs...

In an asymmetric information context with bounded rationality, investors’ loss aversion, mental accounting and buy-and-hold behavior may create opportunities for good-type firms to signal their project quality by choosing lower issuance prices at rights offerings than bad-type firms do. Bad firms are prevented from imitating better ones, as their d...