Volume 64, Issue 1

Using a unique historical source, we show that the bias towards local investments can – to a large extent – be explained by overall economic circumstances, the general performance of the market and the level of activity of the investor. We examine portfolio choices Stuttgart private banker Joseph Frisch made throughout his life and find that the preference for local shares was highest in times of insecurity, low returns and reduced investment activity. With higher returns, a stable and growing economy and more experience, the preference for local shares decreased.

The «Carl-Zeiss-Foundation» had a significant influence on the development of the law of business foundations in the Federal Republic of Germany after 1945. Founded by Ernst Abbe in 1889, the Foundation was created to manage two firms driven by a statute in a self-regulated governance exclusively. After World War II such kind of business foundations became part of the German corporated landscape, especially after the 1960s. Critizised by a leading group of ordoliberal lawyers and also in the focus of the legislator, the «Carl-Zeiss-Foundation» was seen as a successful «model-firm», which immunized the law of business foundations against further regulations. The article describes the significant influences of this «model-firm» in the making of policies and the non-making of legal rules.

Research on performance-related compensations of financial advisors has recently become a promising field within economics and sociology, because it can help explain portfolio choices of retail customers. However, the expansion of this field to historical contexts has so far been prevented by the lack of knowledge about the historical development of these schemes. The following article aims to fill this void by exploring the spread of performance-related compensation schemes among banks and insurance companies in West Germany in the 1970s and 1980s. It is argued that this spread has been closely linked to a reform of the Federal Government system of savings subsidies in 1970. This reform led to a fierce competition between insurance companies and banks for wealth formation savings payments (vermögenswirksame Leistungen). In this article, it is argued that the characteristics of this particular state-subsidized market led to a significant advantage of financial institutions that used performance-related compensation schemes over those who did not. Thus, the latter institutions had to adopt these schemes to stay competitive. In the 1980s, banks as well as insurance companies expanded the application of compensation schemes that were originally designed for the market of wealth formation savings payments to other markets for financial products and services. Thus, the principles of competition on wealth formation savings payments were adopted to the general market for household savings.

Capacity utilization, scale efficiency or technical change? Which factors determined total factor productivity of the large corporations in Ruhr coal mining in the interwar period (1919–1938)? Business and economic historians in Germany still face quite substantial informational gaps when it comes to assessing firms’ historical performance. While the use of indicators derived from external accounting or the capital market is common, indicators relating more closely to the sphere of production are often neglected, not the least because of data insufficiencies or the effort involved in collecting suitable data. For 15 mining corporations that can be associated with the 100 largest corporations in Germany as of 1938 according to Fiedler (1999), this article documents and interprets estimates of firm-specific total factor productivity and its components for the interwar period.