Christian Funke – författare

Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject Business economics - Investment and Finance, grade: 1,0 (A), European Business School - International University Schlo Reichartshausen Oestrich-Winkel (Department for Corporate Finance and Capital Markets), course: Seminar International Corporate Finance, language: English, abstract: The groundbreaking work of MODIGLIANI & MILLER (MM) introduced the rigors of economic analysis to financial research. This is generally considered the beginning point of modern managerial finance. Their first economic models were challenged by financial practitioners for being overly simplistic in their assumptions and, therefore, lacking real world application value. MM acknowledged and addressed this fact in their first paper. Later models relaxed some assumptions, such as symmetric information or complete contracts, while trying to retain an explanatory value in the spirit of the original MM papers. This incorporation of more realistic elements, such as strategic interaction and asymmetric information, brought several problems to financial economists models: they required a lot of definitions, became even more complex and were not easily comparable. Game theory provided a solution for those problems in its first applications to economics in the 70s and 80s: a set of common definitions and a basic language to guarantee comparability and empirical testability of financial models using game theoretic concepts. Nowadays, there are few issues in finance research which have not been modeled by applying game theoretic concepts, and therefore it is crucial to be familiar with the basics of game theory and its application in finance. The objective of this paper is to provide an intuitive approach to game theory in finance by first giving an overview of the basic foundations of game theory, and then providing a survey of some selected applications most relevant to the financial practitioner.

Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 1,7 (A-), European Business School - International University Schlo Reichartshausen Oestrich-Winkel (Strategic Business Management), course: Managing in the Global Economy, language: English, abstract: This paper addresses the question whether China has made enough reforms to justify significant investments and which additional reform steps are needed. The People's Republic of China (PRC) has shown tremendous Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth in absolute and per capita terms of 9.3% and 8.0% per annum, respectively, over the last 25 years since market oriented reforms were started in 1978. Its GDP per capita has quadrupled over this period reaching around 1,000 US$ in 2003. The market oriented reforms in China can be divided into two stages, dubbed reforming the system from for the first 15 years and replacing the system from 1993 onwards. In the second stage a significant determinant of China s success has been its policy of opening up the economy and attracting foreign direct investment (FDI). FDI grew with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26.7%, and the growth rates in the 90s have even been more staggering with FDI reaching about 50 billion US$ in 2002. This FDI growth went hand in hand with growing imports and exports, reaching over 300 billion US$ in 2003 with a CAGR of 14.7% and 15.6%, respectively. This paper aims at answering the question stated in the opening paragraph by analyzing the specific market oriented reforms which have taken place in the two stages of the Chinese reform process. The paper argues that China definitely has made enough reforms to justify the significant FDI which has been flowing into the country. However, there clearly is a need for more reforms as China becomes more and more interconnected in a globalized world economy, especially with joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. Those reforms necessary to continue the Chinese success story will be addressed by analyzing reforms needed in the areas of the financial system, the rule of law, market liberalization and the governmental bureaucracy. The whole analysis will be guided by the analytical concepts of AHRENS 2002 as well as the institutional analysis in QUIAN 1999.

Diploma Thesis from the year 2003 in the subject Business economics - Investment and Finance, grade: 1,1 (A), European Business School - International University Schlo Reichartshausen Oestrich-Winkel (Endowed-Chairf for Corporate Finance and Capital Markets), language: English, abstract: The idea that the general characteristics of a firm's ownership structure can affect performance has achieved considerable attention and related research brought forward relatively consistent empirical evidence e.g. on the positive impact of managerial ownership on firm performance. However, the evidence on the relation between ownership and capital structure is less consistent and numerous, although there are good reasons to believe that there may be such a relationship. Since the capital structure irrelevance propositions of MODIGLIANI/MILLER economists have devoted considerable time to studying cross-sectional and time-series variations in capital structure. More recent work following the seminal contribution by JENSEN/MECKLING has employed an agency theory perspective in the search for an explanation of capital structure variations. With this managerial perspective capital structure is not only explained by variations in internal and external contextual factors of the firm, but also by the values, goals, preferences and desires of managers. Corporate financing decisions are influenced by managers incentives and the incentives for managers to act opportunistically can be influenced by the ownership structure of the firm. However, most empirical work analyzing a firm s capital structure in cross-sectional and time-series studies ignores the equity ownership structure as a possible explanatory variable. This can be partly explained by problems associated with the availability of ownership data, when compared to readily available accounting and market data on other relevant variables. Notwithstanding, it entails a problem of model misspecification as omitting a relevant variable may cause misleading empirical conclusions. Additionally, the problem arises that the studies taking ownership structure into account do not bring forward consistent results. They find contradictory evidence without any side clearly dominating the discussion, neither theoretically nor empirically. The objective of this thesis is to contribute to the empirical debate of those two problems by investigating whether the structure of equity ownership can help in explaining cross-sectional variation in capital structure for the case of Germany. Since corporate managers and external block holders are two groups who have considerable influence on a firm s decisions, this thesis focuses on the effects of managerial share ownership and external block ownership on capital structure.

Research in empirical asset pricing has – fostered by the availability of new databases – become an important field of research within the last three decades. This kind of - search contributes to the ongoing and exciting debate between the neoclassical and the behavioral explanation of asset pricing and can help to better explain the evolvement of asset prices in capital markets. Research in empirical asset pricing requires multiple competences: a sound - derstanding of capital markets, market designs, trading processes, and asset pricing models, a superior handling of large databases, and efficient programming skills. Chr- tian Funke lives up to this challenge and his doctoral thesis comprises of three important essays in empirical asset pricing. In the first essay, Christian investigates the long term performance of rival c- panies related to acquisition targets. He documents an underreaction of capital markets to the information contained in M&A announcements. Following large rival gain events due to positive information signaling and large rival loss events due to the negative competitive effects of the transaction, he observes a return drift for up to 12 months after the announcement. The second essay documents a strong and prevalent drift in long-term industry returns after M&A announcements. Specifically, industries that experience positive - erage announcement reactions continue to do well in the future, while industries that experience negative average announcement reactions continue to do poorly. The e- dence suggests that capital markets underreact to the industry-wide information p- vided by merger announcements.

Research in empirical asset pricing has – fostered by the availability of new databases – become an important field of research within the last three decades. This kind of - search contributes to the ongoing and exciting debate between the neoclassical and the behavioral explanation of asset pricing and can help to better explain the evolvement of asset prices in capital markets. Research in empirical asset pricing requires multiple competences: a sound - derstanding of capital markets, market designs, trading processes, and asset pricing models, a superior handling of large databases, and efficient programming skills. Chr- tian Funke lives up to this challenge and his doctoral thesis comprises of three important essays in empirical asset pricing. In the first essay, Christian investigates the long term performance of rival c- panies related to acquisition targets. He documents an underreaction of capital markets to the information contained in M&A announcements. Following large rival gain events due to positive information signaling and large rival loss events due to the negative competitive effects of the transaction, he observes a return drift for up to 12 months after the announcement. The second essay documents a strong and prevalent drift in long-term industry returns after M&A announcements. Specifically, industries that experience positive - erage announcement reactions continue to do well in the future, while industries that experience negative average announcement reactions continue to do poorly. The e- dence suggests that capital markets underreact to the industry-wide information p- vided by merger announcements.