'An interesting new perspective on the role banks played during reunification. Clearly a valuable contribution to the current debate on the mistakes that were made following the fall of the Berlin wall.' - Dr. Oliver R.A. Prill, Financial Institutions Group, McKinsey & Co
'The wholesale transplant of West German institutions to East Germany after reunification offers a series of laboratory-style experiments rarely encountered in macroeconomic history. Robins' study of the banking sector is both pioneering and comprehensive, an invaluable snapshot of financial transition.' - Professor Peter Oppenheimer, Christ Church, Oxford
'As scholar and banker, Dr Robins contributes outstandingly to the debate on the deindustrialization of the Eastern Lander after unification by showing that successors to the GDR state banks - chiefly the Bundesbank and the two large West German commercial banks - were institutionally inadequate to supply the risk capital needed, leaving the East a profound drain on the tax-payer of the West.' - Professor Michael Kaser, Institute for German Studies, University of Birmingham