Financial Intermediaries and the Real Economy (FIRE)

FIRE was founded on January 1, 2015. The sole supporter of the newly established research center at Frankfurt School of Finance & Management is the Frankfurt-based Commerzbank Foundation. FIRE pursues two main objectives:

First, the generation of excellent academic research that bears practical relevance and, second, to facilitate the development of junior researchers. The main thrust of research interests concern the nexus between financial institutions, markets and other intermediaries, and the real economy in terms of the allocation of resources, such as employment and investment. Questions that we currently pursue are:

Examples

What are the effects of asset purchase programmes by the ECB on loan pricing?
Do loan terms change if account managers are re-assigned within a bank?
Do relationship lenders help (the right) SME to internationalise?
Is crowdfunding an alternative to bank loans for young, new ventures?

Our work is primarily empirical in nature and seeks to rigorously identify causal effects. Thereby, we aim to add value to our stakeholders by pairing the practical expertise of our partners with scientific methods to analyse existing data, aid the design of quasi-natural experiments, and provide evidence-based policy and management advice.

We want to serve as a bridge between the financial industry, entrepreneurs, regulators and policy makers. To this end, we host and/or present our work at academic and non-academic conferences in regular intervals and seek to actively collaborate with an increasing network of partners from the industry, the financial sector, non-governmental organizations and policy institutions.

Conferences

FIRE co-organizes regularly academic conferences that provide platforms to foster the dialogue between internationally renowned researchers, policy makers and industry representatives.

1st IWH-FIN-FIRE Workshop

"Challenges to Financial Stability"
27./28. August 2015 – Halle a.d.S.

Together with the Institute for Eoncomic Research Halle (IWH) and Deutsche Bundesbank, this two-day conference brought together academics working on projects that investigate current main challenges to financial stability. Keynotes by the Vice president of the Bundesbank Claudia Buch and Elena Carletti from Bocconi University paired perspectives on the matter from theory and policy making.

Sie finden alle Präsentationen als PDF unter diesem Link.

Bundesbank/CEPR/FIRE Fall conference

"Financial intermediaries and the real economy: One year after European Banking Union take-off"
Late September 2015 – Frankfurt am Main

This workshop sheds light on the impact of a financial system undergoing fundamental regulatory changes on real economic activity with the advent of the European Banking Union. The two-day event features keynote speeches by IWH President Reint Gropp, Thorsten Beck from Cass Business School, and a dinner speech by Andreas Dombred, member of the board of Deutsche Bundesbank.

4th Central Banking Workshop

"Financial Market Regulation vs Financial Market Liberalisation"

This workshop is a 3-day event organised for the 3rd time together with Frankfurt School and the Bundesbank and brings together viewpoints from academia, policy makers, and representatives from the financial industry to discuss contemporary topics in financial economics, intermediation, and central banking. The target group are central bankers from the Eurosystem and beyond as well as other international regulatory agencies.

5th Central Banking Workshop

"Financial stability and expansionary monetary policy"
14 to 17 September 2015, Bundesbank Conference Centre, Eltville

This year’s workshop assembles again European central bankers and supervisors, renowned ccademics and highly recognized practitioners to present and share their views. We would like to encourage nominations and applications from colleagues with different areas of competence related to the role and functioning of financial stability as well as of monetary policy. Participants are invited to take an active role in shaping positions and to contribute to an open discussion during the course of the worksh

Presentations

FIRE researchers present ongoing research projects at seminars and conferences to collect feedback and disseminate results to a broader audience. Below is a list of past and upcoming presentations.

More Less

"Krise, Kreditklemme, Crowdfunding: ein Zusammenhang?"
at the Conference 'Finanzdienstleister der nächsten Generation'
Frankfurt School Verlag, 13.5.2015 – Frankfurt am Main
June 2015 - London School of Economics Systemic Risk Centre
June 2015 – DIW Berlin

Thesis Projects

Abgeschlossene Arbeiten

"Relationship lending" - Cheryl Purnama, Master of Finance

Theses (in progress):

"Corporate Social Responsibility in banking: A case study"
Matheus Lima (Full Time MBA)
"Discount window use and bank stock prices"
Chang Shao (Full Time MBA)
"Asset Management Industry and Global Financial Stability"
Moritz Jonas (Bachelor of Science)
"How did capital markets react on the announcement and on actual releases of minutes of ECB policy meetings?"
Simon Kuhn (Bachelor of Science)
"Cross-sectional dependence in bank stock returns and extraordinary monetary policy" - Maximilian Pagel (Bachelor of Science)
"Which Companies Make Use of Supply Chain Finance?"
Nadine Walka (Bachelor of Science)