https://hdl.handle.net/10419/23 Mon, 19 Oct 2026 22:05:24 GMT 2026-10-19T22:05:24Z https://hdl.handle.net/10419/52130 Title: Home-field advantage or a matter of ambiguity aversion? Local bias among German individual investors Authors: Baltzer, Markus; Stolper, Oscar; Walter, Andreas Abstract: We analyze the effect of geographic proximity on individual investors' portfolio choice. Using a unique data set which covers the common stockholdings of private households at regional banks in Germany, we document strong and consistent overinvestment in geographically close companies. Our results conclusively reject the presence of an informational advantage ('home-field advantage') of local over non-local investors. Instead, households' preference for local equity turns out to be familiarity-driven. We conclude that individual investors' local bias is induced by ambiguity aversion in the portfolio selection process rather than a trading strategy based on superior information about local companies. Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/10419/52130 2011-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/10419/44955 Title: Robust monetary policy in a new Keynesian model with imperfect interest rate pass-through Authors: Gerke, Rafael; Hammermann, Felix Abstract: We use robust control to study how a central bank in an economy with imperfect interest rate pass-through conducts monetary policy if it fears that its model could be misspecified. The effects of the central bank's concern for robustness can be summarised as follows. First, depending on the shock, robust optimal monetary policy under commitment responds either more cautiously or more aggressively. Second, such robustness comes at a cost: the central bank dampens volatility in the inflation rate preemptively, but accepts higher volatility in the output gap and the loan rate. Third, if the central bank faces uncertainty only in the IS equation or the loan rate equation, the robust policy shifts its concern for stabilisation away from inflation. Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/10419/44955 2011-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/10419/52131 Title: Using cash to monitor liquidity: Implications for payments, currency demand and withdrawal behavior Authors: von Kalckreuth, Ulf; Schmidt, Tobias; Stix, Helmut Abstract: Standard transaction cost arguments can only partially explain why the share of cash transactions is still high in many countries. This paper shows that consumers' desire to monitor liquidity is one of the reasons. Consumers make use of a distinctive feature of cash - a glance into one's pocket provides a signal for both the remaining budget as well as the level of past expenses. We propose a theoretical framework which incorporates this feature of cash, and derives implications not only for cash usage as such but also for a broader set of paymentrelated activities. Survey data from Germany on consumers' payment and withdrawal patterns are used to test these implications empirically. The data are consistent with all theoretical predictions: consumers who need to keep control over their remaining liquidity and who have elevated costs of information processing and storage will conduct a larger percentage of their payments using cash, hold fewer non-cash payment instruments, withdraw less often and hold larger cash balances than other consumers. Such consumers also use payment cards for some transactions; they switch to non-cash payment instruments only at higher transaction values than other consumers, however. Our model provides an explanation of why cash usage has declined only slowly in some countries despite broad diffusion of non-cash means of payment. Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/10419/52131 2011-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/10419/54984 Title: The use of tax havens in exemption regimes Authors: Gumpert, Anna; Hines, James R.; Schnitzer, Monika Abstract: This paper analyzes the tax haven investment behavior of multinational firms from a country that exempts foreign income from taxation. High foreign tax rates generally encourage firms to invest in tax havens, though significant costs of reallocating taxable income dampen these incentives. The behavior of German manufacturing firms from 2002-2008 is consistent with this prediction: at the mean, one percentage point higher foreign tax rates are associated with three percentage point greater likelihoods of owning tax haven affiliates. This contrasts with earlier evidence for U.S. firms subject to home country taxation, which are more likely to invest in tax havens if they face lower foreign tax rates. Foreign tax rates appear to be unrelated to tax haven investments of German firms in service industries, possibly reflecting the difficulty they face in reallocating taxable income. Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/10419/54984 2011-01-01T00:00:00Z