German banks tend to be less profitable than their foreign counterparts. This paper estimates the likely effect of the phaseout of state guarantees for public sector banks, reviews the various ways in which public policy could contribute to their restructuring, and discusses the various arguments for and against public involvement in banking.

Written by a team of scholars, predominantly from the Centre for Financial Studies in Frankfurt, this volume provides a descriptive survey of the present state of the German financial system and a new analytical framework to explain its workings.

This paper evaluates the risks and vulnerabilities of the German financial system and reviews both the German regulatory and supervisory framework and implementation of the common European framework insofar as it is relevant for Germany. The country is home to two global systemically important financial institutions, Deutsche Bank AG and Allianz SE. The system is also very heterogeneous, with a range of business models and a large number of smaller banks and insurers. The regulatory landscape has changed profoundly with strengthened solvency and liquidity regulations for banks (the EU Capital Requirements Regulation and Directive IV), and the introduction of macroprudential tools.

Applying the new economics of organisation and relational theories of the firm to the problem of understanding cross-national variation in the political economy, this volume elaborates a new understanding of the institutional differences that characterise the 'varieties of capitalism' worldwide.

The Research Handbook on State Aid in the Banking Sector brings together experts in state aid and in financial regulation, drawn from legal academia, legal practice, economics, and from the EU and EEA institutions to shed light on this relationship. The editors and expert contributors do this by elucidating key concepts that underpin the application of state aid law to banks, and by considering specific aspects of the interface between state aid and financial regulation. The Handbook's analysis is complemented by a number of key country-based case studies, and by a concluding section which takes stock of the Banking Union’s package of legislative/regulatory reforms and reflects on the possible future role of state aid in this sector.

This paper reviews empirical and theoretical work on the links between banks and their governments (the bank-sovereign nexus). How significant is this nexus? What do we know about it? To what extent is it a source of concern? What is the role of policy intervention? The paper concludes with a review of recent policy proposals.