collateral in credit rationing in markets with imperfect information note in their 1981 article joseph stiglitz and andrew weiss analyze adverse selection and incentive effects in the loan market the models considered are based on two crucial assumptions borrowers are subject to limited liability and lenders cannot distinguish borrowers projects of different risk stiglitz and weiss show that a bank that raises its interest rate may suffer adverse selection because only risky borrowers will be willing to borrow at the higher rate thus lenders may choose not to raise the interest rate to eliminate excess demand resulting in the possibility of a credit rationing equilibrium stiglitz and weiss also consider briefly the role of collateral in such credit rationing models they conclude that lenders may choose not to use collateral requirements as a rationing device an increase in collateral requirements like an increase in the interest rate potentially leads to a decrease in the lender s expected return on loans because of resulting adverse incentive and selection effects the purpose of this note is to further investigate the role of collateral in these models stiglitz and weiss discussion in section iii establishes that adverse selection effects can result from increases in collateral when borrowers are risk averse i will show by returning to a model they discussed earlier in section i that the adverse selection effects can also occur when borrowers are risk neutral stiglitz and weiss outline a model to consider the use of collateral as a rationing device section iii in that model all potential borrowers face the same array of risky projects each potential borrower chooses at most one of those projects to undertake the individuals are by assumption risk averse with decreasing absolute risk aversion and possess different amounts of initial wealth thus choice of project if any to undertake and the method of finance selffinance from initial wealth or loan finance will differ from one individual to the next stiglitz and weiss show that among those who undertake risky projects and who choose borrowing as the method of finance wealthier individuals undertake riskier projects an increase in collateral has two effects on the market for loans those individuals who remain in the market will choose to undertake less risky projects and those individuals who drop out of the market are less wealthy low risk borrowers if the second effect is sufficiently strong then increased collateral requirements will mean decreased expected returns for the lender thus a credit rationing equilibrium may occur since lenders may not choose to use collateral requirements or the interest rate to eliminate excess demand the adverse selection effect just described does not occur in this model if the individuals are risk neutral consequently the potential for a credit rationing equilibrium is limited to cases where borrowers are risk averse to see that increases in collateral requirements can also result in adverse selection if borrowers are risk neutral consider the model stiglitz and weiss used to analyze the adverse selection effects of increases in the interest rate section i pp 395 99 it differs from the section iii model discussed above in three ways first borrowers are risk neutral second all projects ar loan financed the analogy to the section iii model is that no individuals have sufficient wealth to self finance projects third in the section

market model stationarity of individual public utilities the search for an economically sound procedure for estimating an appropri ate rate of return on equity consistent with the supreme court s ruling in the hope case 13 has ied many economists financial experts and public service commissions to estimate the rate of return on equity with the capital asset pricing model capm see 30 19 and 21 the popularity of the capm in regu latory proceedings was reported by harrington 15 who in a survey of public service commissions found that 38 states were considering or had seen the capm used two jurisdictions preferred the capm oregon required the capm and south carolina would require the capm in all future cases hence given the popularity of the capm and the tremendous economic impact that out comes of regulatory proceedings have on the financial well being of both the regulated firm and the consumer it is critical that if the capm is used in regula tory proceedings that it be applied in the best manner possible and that any limitations associated with the capm be recognized fully a prime factor in the application of the capm is the estimation of the mar ket model 29 to obtain an estimate of the ex ante beta p the systematic risk of both the regulated firm in question and comparable nonregulated firms since the market model usually is estimated on the basis of ex post data a necessary condition for an accurate estimate of 3 is that the market model is stationary or unchanging over time hence the ability to assess systematically and accurately the stationarity of the market model is critical to the proper application of the capm the objectives of this study are 1 to use a more powerful statistical test the cusum of squares of recursive residuals to determine the stationarity of the market model of individual securities in a specified time period 2 to provide empirical evidence of the stationarity of the market model for regulated firms 3 to provide empirical evidence concerning the stationarity of the market model by industry and 4 to use quandt s log likelihood ratio for identifying when a secu

labor migration and earnings differences the case of rural china this article presents empirical evidence supporting the hypothesis that the decision of chinese rural people to migrate is affected by noneconomic forces using the 1820 rural household survey from sichuan province migration behavior and earnings are analyzed logistic probability models show that the decision to migrate is driven largely by the availability of rural non farm employment opportunities however if jobs are available in the province even at lower wages rural people will choose to stay rather than to migrate the major deterrent to migration is the lack of safety during transportation and in destination cities as well as forced separation from families moreover rural migrants are denied the legal right to reside permanently in cities furthermore findings reveal that although labor productivity in migrant activities is higher than it is in local non farm sectors the economic cost of migration in china is so high as to significantly limit reallocation one implication of this study is that without artificial barriers to labor migration the number of migratory workers would be higher since the important objective of the chinese government is to control rural to urban migration it is likely that restrictive migration policies will continue however putting aside the issue of social justice the economic efficiency loss under the chinese system should not be ignored

bank lending policy credit scoring and the survival of loans to evaluate loan applicants banks increasingly use credit scoring models the objective of such models typically is to minimize default rates or the number of incorrectly classified loans thereby they fail to take into account that loans are multiperiod contracts for which reason it is important for banks not only to know if but also when a loan will default in this paper a bivariate tobit model with a variable censoring threshold and sample selection effects is estimated for 1 the decision to provide a loan or not and 2 the survival time of granted loans the model proves to be an effective tool to separate applicants with short and with long survival times the bank s loan provision process is shown to be inefficient loans are granted in a way that conflicts with both default risk minimization and survival time maximization there is thus no trade off between higher default risk and higher return in the lending policy

local social capital and geographical mobility in the north of europe club membership is higher than in the south but the frequency of contacts with friends relatives and neighbors is lower we link this fact to another one the low geographical mobility rates in the south of europe relative to the north to interpret these facts we build a model of local social capital and mobility investing in local ties is rational when workers do not expect to move to another region we find that observationally close individuals may take different paths characterized by high local social capital low mobility and high unemployment vs low social capital high propensity to move and higher employment probability employment protection reinforces the accumulation of local social capital and thus reduces mobility european data supports the theory within a country and at the individual level more social capital is associated with lower mobility

entrepreneurship and economic theory this article discusses economic theories of entrepreneurship drawing principally on work conducted in labour economics microeconomics macroeconomics and financial economics the article explains how incentives and constraints of various kinds affect occupational choices and entrepreneurial innovation as well as how entrepreneurial decisions affect macroeconomic performance implications for public policy are drawn

credit rationing and the demand for owner occupied housing abstract this study applies cross sectional data to test whether default risk induced credit constraints affect the demand for owner occupied housing credit constrained households are argued to exhibit different elasticities of demand for housing than less constrained households housing demand elasticities are then estimated separately for households obtaining va insured and non va loans the government guarantee on va loans insures lenders against default enabling lenders to apply easier nonprice terms of credit results indicate that observed demand elasticities differ significantly across va and conventional mortgage holders that marginal changes in credit constraints affect housing demand and that fha financing mitigates the effect of mortgage constraints

imperfect information and the theory of government intervention in farm credit markets this paper describes some possible economic motivations for government intervention in farm credit markets these motivations are made possible by explicit departures from the perfect information and complete market assumptions that underlie both the neoclassical competitive paradigm and the fundamental theorems of welfare economics to be more precise the analysis focuses on three types of asymmetric information between farmers and prospective outside investors both of whom are assumed to be risk neutral arguably the three informational asymmetries examined here represent natural departures from perfect markets in that unlike the unencumbered neoclassical model each elicits farmers optimal use of debt contracts rather than equity instruments or other contractual forms to raise investment capital despite their consistency with observed contractual choices all three of the models analyzed below yield free market equilibria that diverge from first best perfect information outcomes given the inefficiency of these market equilibria the key question raised and discussed here is can government improve upon the derived competitive outcomes and if so how despite the enormity of the credit rationing literature only a few extant studies address this question in models that are consistent with debt contracts among them are demeza and webb 1987 1988 1989 and innes 1988 which focus on the third type of informational asymmetry considered below the other two information structures posited in this paper have been studied in several analyses of credit markets but with attention focused on positive attributes of the unfettered competitive equilibrium rather than on prospective implications for welfare enhancing government intervention in what follows th s literature is surveyed and for the first two information structures some new policy results a e presented a critical discussion of the paper s limitations concludes the article

interest rates risk and imperfect markets puzzles and policies traditional theory emphasizes the key role that monetary policy can play through the manipulation of interest rates but there are several puzzles that cannot be reconciled with standard models these include the apparent constancy in interest rates over extended periods and changes at other times which appear unrelated to changes in technology and demography the cyclical pattern of movements in real interest rates the impact of nominal not real interest rate changes on real variables and the cyclical pattern of movements in interest rate spreads this paper reaches beyond the standard competitive equilibrium perfect information model of credit markets towards imperfect information models particularly those that focus on the determinants of bank behaviour of the standard models the money demand model is most deficient in understanding these puzzles the loanable funds theory and a generalized version of real productivity theory can be reconciled with imperfect information and markets and the consequent credit and equity rationing regimes help to explain the puzzles specifically banks may be insensitive to changes in monetary stance owing to risk aversion there are strong policy implications it is argued for instance that in east asia raising interest rates exacerbated economic decline and rather than contributing to exchange rate stability may have induced capital flight as default risk increased lowering risk adjusted expected returns

asymmetric information occupational choice and government policy a model of credit markets under asymmetric information is proposed in which individuals differ in abilities that are valued in both entrepreneurship and paid employment unlike the heterogeneous ability model of de meza and webb 1987 over investment is not inevitable under investment and credit rationing can occur instead this result depends on the novel possibility of there being greater separation of types in paid employment than in entrepreneurship the model allows individuals to be monitored in both occupations and permits derivation of the conditions under which the novel possibility holds the role of corrective government policies is also discussed

optimal regulation under uncertainty this paper is concerned with the problem of price regulation when demand is uncertain uncertainty gives rise to substantial difficulties in determining both the return a firm s owners should be provided and a set of prices capable of producing that return we argue that conventional approaches to price regulation are incapable of attaining the economically desirable objectives of efficiency and an equitable return to investors the deficiencies in current practices are attributable to the separation of the risk measurement return determination and price setting activities in the conventional approach we present a model of the regulated firm that synthesizes contemporary financial market theory and the theory of the firm under uncertainty in our approach the income stream produced by the firm is valued ex ante in the financial market according to investors perceptions and preferences over risk return characteristics we portray the firm as producing risk and return by choosing among available production technologies to maximize its market value given the prices set by regulators within this framework it is shown that regulators can choose the lowest prices consistent with an equitable return to investors we also show that prices so chosen induce the choice of the optimal technology by the firm in the traditional regulatory framework as thoroughly described and explained by bonbright 3 the goal of regulators is to set rates in such a way that all costs are covered including a return on invested capital commensurate with the risk of equity investment determination of the latter is difficult at best it is generally agreed that 1 the fair return depends on risk 2 the return required by investors as compensation for risk bearing is most accurately measured by observing the returns to competitive firms in otherwise similar circumstances and 3 estimation of required returns by observation of other regulated firms is generally inappropriate since the risk and regulation effects are confounded more recently myers 13 has argued for the application of finance theory to rate determination within the traditional regulatory framework in particular he argues that the capital asset pricing model capm developed by sharpe 14 lintner 9 and mossin 12 is especially well suited for this purpose since a single quantitative measure of risk is relevant in that model further since the capm offers an explicit equilibrium risk return relationship information about the risks and returns of all firms can be directly employed in determining the fair return to a regulated firm

a theory of corporate capital structure and investment this article uses a general equilibrium framework to explore the origins and limitations of financial intermediaries in the model investors have a generic lending technology that they can improve at a cost those who upgrade become intermediaries to exploit their advantage however conflicts with depositors will limit the banks market presence and they will only lend to moderately endowed firms while bondholders will finance cash rich corporations the article also analyzes the extent to which investors adopt the superior lending technique the nature of bank competition and how corporate and bank conditions affect interest rates and investment copyright 2004 oxford university press

regulator selection methods and electricity prices proponents of regulator change argue that elected utility commissions would perform better than appointed commissions but an unresolved issue is whether the method of regulator selection influences rate levels and rate structures this analysis presumes that regulators are more than mediators between producers and consumers i e that they act in their self interest to maximize their preference functions the authors hypothesize that directly elected regulators reflecting relatively higher voter input to regulatory decisionmaking permit lower electricity prices and that elected regulators will reflect strong opposition to rate increases economic analysis of the relevance of regulatory arrangement finds that this hypothesis is not valid although the direction in the movement of relative rates through time is consistent with their expectations 23 references 7 tables

monetary policy bank leverage and financial stability abstract this paper shows that with limited liability banks lever up excessively to finance new loans lower monetary policy rates can worsen or reduce these incentives depending on the size of the shock when equity financing is ruled out when this constrained is relaxed but the bank faces costly dividend adjustment lower monetary policy rates always worsen risk taking incentives and the effect is persistent the reason is that costly dividend adjustment lowers the opportunity cost of lending in this model capital requirements are closer to the source of the distortion and thus work better than loan to value caps in reducing excessive risk taking

moral hazard under commercial and universal banking many claims have been made about the potential benefits and the potential costs of adopting a system of universal banlcing in the united states we evaluate these claims using a model where there is a moral hazard problem between banks and borrowers a moral hazard problem between banks and a deposit insurer and a costly state verification problem under conditions we describe allowing banks to take equity positions in firms strengthens their ability to extract surplus and exacerbates problems of moral hazard the incentives of universal banks to take equity positions will often be strongest when these problems are most severe for many decades commercial banks in the united states have been prohibited from making equity investments in the firms they serve rather they are restricted to providing them with loans in the form essentially of debt contracts this longstanding regulatory restriction1 results in distinctly different roles for bank lenders and equity investors and has had important implications for the entire financial sector the american system of commercial banking presents a sharp contrast with the banking systems of some other countries most notably germany in which banks are permitted to take equity positions under such universal banking arrangements banks can make equity investments as well as loans vote their equity shares and even hold seats on the boards of directors of nonfinancial firms in general they can be actively involved in all aspects of firm decision malqing in germany the control rights the authors have benefitted from the helpful comments of doug diamond joe haubrich ross levine stan longhofer joao santos and an anonymous referee the views expressed herein are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the federal reserve bank of minneapolis or the federal reserve system 1 the key legislation which constrains u s banks equity investments is the glass steagall act of 1933 however a number of other laws also pertain to this issue particularly the bank holding company act of 1956 and its 1970 amendments incidentally there are some important exceptions to the equity investment prohibition in default situations banks are perrnitted to restructure loans into equity positions with the requirement of divestiture after a few years see james 1993 also bank holding companies are permitted to form separately capitalized venture capital subsidiaries for the expressed purpose of investing in start up enterprises john h boyd is a professor of finance in the carlson school of management at the university of minnesota and an adjunct consultant with the federal reserve bank of minneapolis chun chang is an associate professor of finance in the carlson school of management at the university of minnesota bruce d smith is a professor of economics at the university of texas ataustin

signalling and the pricing of new issues this paper develops a signalling model with two signals two attributes and a continuum of signal levels and attribute types to explain new issue underpricing both the fraction of the new issue retained by the issuer and its offering price convey to investors the unobservable intrinsic value of the firm and the variance of its cash flows many of the model s comparative statics results are novel empirically testable and consistent with the existing empirical evidence on new issues in particular the degree of underpricing which can be inferred from observable variables is positively related to the firm s post issue share price

labor market outcomes and reforms in china over the past few decades of economic reform china s labor markets have been transformed to an increasingly market driven system china has two segregated economies the rural and urban understanding the shifting nature of this divide is probably the key to understanding the most important labor market reform issues of the last decades and the decades ahead from 1949 the chinese economy allowed virtually no labor mobility between the rural and urban sectors rural urban segregation was enforced by a household registration system called hukou individuals born in rural areas receive agriculture hukou while those born in cities are designated as nonagricultural hukou in the countryside employment and income were linked to the commune based production system collectively owned communes provided very basic coverage for health education and pensions in cities state assigned life time employment centrally determined wages and a cradle to grave social welfare system were implemented in the late 1970s china s economic reforms began but the timing and pattern of the changes were quite different across rural and urban labor markets this paper focuses on employment and wages in the urban labor markets the interaction between the urban and rural labor markets through migration and future labor market challenges despite the remarkable changes that have occurred inherited institutional impediments still play an important role in the allocation of labor the hukou system remains in place and 72 percent of china s population is still identified as rural hukou holders china must continue to ease its restrictions on rural urban migration and must adopt policies to close the widening rural urban gap in education or it risks suffering both a shortage of workers in the growing urban areas and a deepening urban rural economic divide

the emergence of a market society changing mechanisms of stratification in china this article examines the effect of institutional change the shift from redistribution to markets in altering the mechanisms of stratification new institutionalists maintain that interests are emb

pyramidal groups and debt abstract this paper suggests that debt should be raised by subsidiaries in order to exploit the limited liability of the holding company however when this behavior increases the cost of funds the holding might prefer to raise debt to a point where it would also default when subsidiaries are insolvent after accounting for standard controls we find that holding companies in italian pyramids have higher leverage than subsidiaries and that the cash flow share of the entrepreneur in the subsidiary does not play a significant role these findings are consistent with the implications of our model of group capital structure

financial intermediation and delegated monitoring this paper develops a theory of financial intermediation based on minimizing the cost of monitoring information which is useful for resolving incentive problems between borrowers and lenders it presents a characterization of the costs of providing incentives for delegated monitoring by a financial intermediary diversification within an intermediary serves to reduce these costs even in a risk neutral economy the paper presents some more general analysis of the effect of diversification on resolving incentive problems in the environment assumed in the model debt contracts with costly bankruptcy are shown to be optimal the analysis has implications for the portfolio structure and capital structure of intermediaries

residential mobility and social capital abstract this paper empirically investigates the role of social capital in households residential mobility behavior by considering its spatial dimension this study focuses on a household s social ties with people living nearby which we refer to as its local social capital local social capital may deter residential mobility because the resources stemming from them are location specific and will be less valuable if a household moves we conjecture that a household s possession of local social capital has a negative effect on its residential mobility and this negative effect of local social capital may be stronger on long distance mobility than on short distance mobility our empirical investigation is based on data from the panel study of income dynamics we obtain evidence which is supportive of these conjectures

the suspension of borrowing an implicit penalty for loan default under imperfect information abstracta credit seeker may be suspended from borrowing for a period of time due to a previous default such suspension is widely used in bank lending through credit check our work analyses the effects of suspension on the investment choice of borrowers under uncertainty and on the lending policy of banks facing asymmetric information we show that suspension should be tightened at low loan rates but loosened otherwise to improve the repayment performance of borrowers we also show that although credit rationing may not be completely removed due to imperfect information the excess demand for credit or transitive waiting in the market can actually be attenuated by such efficient use of suspension our theoretical predictions are consistent with observed cyclical patterns of changes in lendingrates and suspension severity

the beliefs of borrowers and lenders and investment decisions abstract this paper examines the role of beliefs in the determination of equilibrium in a standard model of credit markets and investment project choice with asymmetric information it is shown that with ex ante asymmetric information the beliefs of entrepreneurs are important for the equilibrium level of aggregate investment and with ex post asymmetric information the beliefs of creditors are important for the types of projects selected by entrepreneurs

financial crises and recapitalizations we develop a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with financial frictions on both financial intermediaries and goods producing firms since financial intermediaries are highly leveraged we show that the welfare gains from their recapitalization in response to large but rare net worth losses are as large as those from eliminating typical business cycle fluctuations we also find that these gains are increasing in the size of the net worth loss are larger when recapitalization funds are raised from the household rather than the real sector and can be larger when lower idiosyncratic risk leads to higher leverage

regulator selection and endogenous systematic risk a major issue in the financial literature of regulated industries is whether the cost of capital is endogenous to the regulatory process cross spectral estimates of the market model are used to determine if the method of regulator selection contributes to either frequency dependence or phase shift lead lag in electric utility systematic risk it is determined here that electric utilities regulated by elected commissions experience frequency dependence in systematic risk this finding lends support to the assertion that the cost of capital is endogenous to the regulatory process

too much investment a problem of asymmetric information this paper shows that under plausible assumptions the inability of lenders to discover all of the relevant characteristics of borrowers results in investment in excess of the socially efficient level raising the rate of interest above the free market level will restore optimality this conflicts with generally held views and is contrasted with the stiglitz weiss model it is shown that the assumptions which yield overinvestment support debt as the equilibrium method of finance however under the stiglitz weiss assumptions used to derive an underinvestment result equity is shown to be the equilibrium method of finance

regulation and systematic risk the case of electric utilities a primary finding is that the presence and intensity of regulation strongly affect systematic risk the empirical results support the view that beta is endogenous to regulation and suggest caution regarding the use of observed measures of systematic risk in assessing the cost of capital in regulatory procedures results suggest that systematic risk is not only endogenous but also uniformly lower in regulated versus unregulated regimes beta is lower the more intensive the degree of regulation and the results hold whether regulation is measured in terms of conferred authority statutes and judicial opinions of inputs resources devoted to regulation or of outputs regulated price the record for the period 1969 74 when factor prices for electric utilities were rising dramatically suggests that the observed lowering of risk cannot be attributed to simple regulatory lag on the other hand the results are observationally equivalent to regulation lowering systematic risk as a by product of wealth redistribution or because reduced risk is the preferred outcome of political constituents 32 references 8 tables

costly monitoring loan contracts and equilibrium credit rationing this paper develops a model with asymmetrically informed agents and costly monitoring of loan contracts where an equilibrium can exhibit credit rationing borrowers are identical ex ante but some receive loans and others do not in contrast to existing credit rationing theories rationing does not occur here due to inflexible prices adverse selection or moral hazard optimizing behaviour produces a standard debt contract in equilibrium the aggregate quantity of loans and equilibrium interest rates respond differently depending on whether there is rationing in equilibrium

the new economics of labor migration this paper reviews selected theoretical and empirical developments in the field of labor migration economics the migration behavior of individuals differs in accordance with their perceived relative deprivation those who are relatively more deprived tend to have stronger incentive to migrate than those who are relatively less deprived moreover a reference group characterized by more income inequality is likely to generate more relative deprivation highly skilled workers are also more likely to migrate migration decisions are often made jointly by the migrant and nonmigrant with a contractual arrangement regarding the sharing of costs and returns the exchange of commitments to share income provides coinsurance of particular interest are the determinants of the speed of adoption of migration as an innovation and the characteristics associated with the delay in the adoption of innovation new econometric techniques including techniques for the analysis of qualitative dependent variables techniques that correct for sample selection bias and those for the analysis of longitudinal data have substantially benefited empirical research in this area new methods that can correct for the biased estimate of the wages particular individuals would receive at 2 or more locations at the same point in time allow researchers to test locational decsion making models estimates of these structural models of labor migration support the hypothesis that individuals respond to income incentives in making the decsion to migrate further research is needed on the pazzling observation that migrant workers earn less than native born workers with similar characteristics during the 1st few years after migration but more thereafter other topics that need further research include the macroeconomic effects of migration the microeconomic and macroeconomic relationships between aging and labor migration and the migration behavior of dual earner families

the effects of capital controls on international capital flows in the presence of asymmetric information abstract this paper examines the effects of capital controls on the volume and composition of international capital flows in the presence of asymmetric information in the two period small open economy model stochastic second period output depends on the level of first period investment which cannot be verified by international investors domestic agents obtain external funding by borrowing on international capital markets and by selling equity to international investors the paper investigates the effects of various capital controls on the debt equity choice domestic investment and welfare controls on capital inflows are shown to shift the composition of flows from fixed income instruments towards equity and to reduce the overall volume of inflows

leaving the countryside rural to urban migration decisions in china this paper employs a simple theoretical model of labor allocation within rural households given existing land arrangements in an attempt to explain why rural chinese do not fully participate in labor migration it first explores the mechanisms by which individual household and community characteristics affect the migration decision empirical results are then presented to substantiate the derived hypotheses the paper further explores the question of whether the migration decision is permanent by analyzing the responses of household consumption to income from migration excerpt

financial structure and aggregate economic activity an overview this paper surveys literature that explores the possible links between the financial system and aggregate economic behavior the survey is in two parts the first reviews the traditional work and the second discusses new research copyright 1988 by ohio state university press

does local social capital deter labour migration evidence from rural china abstractthis article empirically investigates the effect of local social capital on job related migration in rural china a household s social ties in the region of origin which we refer to as local social capital may deter migration because local social capital is location specific and an individual cannot benefit from it if s he migrates in view of chinese gift giving culture we use household expenses on wedding gifts for family members outside household relatives and friends as a proxy for local social networks based on the data from the china health and nutrition survey we find that in rural china local social networks have a significantly negative effect on migration the iv results suggest that a 10 increase in wedding gifts expenses results in roughly a 1 1 percentage points decrease in migration probability

the macroeconomic implications of financial deregulation abstract this paper explores the possible macroeconomic consequences of financial deregulation in an institutional environment where deregulation raises risks in banking the central bank is supposed to maximize an objective function in which the probability of bank failure is an argument it is then shown that the usual tradeoffs between policy objectives imply that financial deregulation will lead to more interest rate smoothing than would otherwise take place and further that because of restricted entry into banking deregulation will call for some inflation the transition toward deregulation raises special problems which are likely to require a more gradual approach toward the stationary equilibrium

optimal contracts under costly state falsification we examine an exchange economy with two agents one risk neutral with a certain endowment and a second risk averse with a random endowment the realization of the endowment is public but can be falsified by the second agent at a cost for a broad class of falsification cost functions the optimal no falsification contract is noncontingent on a left hand interval and strictly increasing with a slope strictly less than one on a right hand interval under a mild further restriction optimal no falsification contracts are in addition piece wise linear optimal contracts may in general require falsifying the state but for a set of the highest endowment realizations there is no falsification we find simple conditions under which the optimal contract is a no falsification contract the model has applications that include financial insurance and employment contracts and tax policy

signaling in credit markets in this paper we show that under a variety of alternative assumptions about the private information of loan applicants a competitive market for loans is characterized by screening banks separate out loan risks by offering higher loans at higher interest rates depending on the nature of the informational asymmetry it may be that applicants with less risky projects select larger rather than smaller loans comparative statics implications are also examined in particular we explore the effects of an increase in banks cost of funds on average loan quality

should courts enforce credit contracts strictly the intimate linkages between law and nance are currently the centre of wide rangingempirical investigations this article presents a simple banking model with informationasymmetries concerning borrowers entrepreneurial talent it is shown that improvements inthe enforcement of contract by courts reduce agency problems but can also reduce the bank sincentive to screen borrowers adequately thus worsening credit allocation a stricterenforcement of credit contracts therefore may be socially harmful even if costlessly achieved improvements in accounting standards however always make bank screening of borrowers lesscostly and improve credit allocation and social welfare

direct versus intermediated finance an old question and a new answer we consider a closed economy where a risk neutral bank competes with a competitive bond market firms can finance a risky project either by a bank credit or by issuing a bond which is directly sold to risk averse investors who also hold safe deposits at the bank we show that the bank tends to allocate more capital to lower quality projects but there are some interesting qualifications if the asymmetric information concerns only the success probability then we observe adverse selection while if it concerns only the expected return bad types are driven out of the market

migration remittances and agricultural productivity in china in our paper we have used the new economics of labor migration framework to trace the complex linkages that exist among migration remittances and agricultural productivity in china constraints in the operation of on farm labor and capital or insurance markets or institutions provide households with a motivation to migrate and distort on farm operations when labor leaves in our household sample the net impact of migration and remittances on maize production is negative excerpt

inefficiencies from financial liberalization in the absence of well functioning equity markets since the seminal works by mckinnon 1973 and shaw 1973 there has been active research into the working of financially repressed economies and the beneficial effects of elnancial liberalization see fry 1982 for a survey of literature they claim that liberalization of the elnancial sector from interest rate ceilings and other restrictions facilitates economic development and growth because higher interest rates lead to both increased savings and greater efficiency of capital allocation today the idea that financial activity should not be repressed has become the new orthodoxy in academia as well as in the major international institutions that provide policy guidelines for developing countries the elnancial liberalization argument however is incomplete the literature on emancial liberalization has emphasized eliminating interest rate ceilings and fostering free competition among banks it has largely overlooked the possibility that endogenous constraints in the credit market such as imperfect information could be signielcant barriers to efelcient credit allocation even when banks are freed from interest rate ceilings nor has the literature dealt with market structure e g the oligopolistic and cartelized banking systems found in most locs the literature has emphasized the role of the banking sector which is correctly perceived as the only organized capital market in most developing countries it has neglected the potential

on the possibility of credit rationing in the stiglitz weiss model contrary to what is consistently assumed in the literature the return function cannot be hump shaped in the stiglitz weiss 1981 model this has important consequences for the possible occurrence of credit rationing and redlining with a single class of borrowers banks offer credit in two stages demand possibly exceeds supply in stage one but not in stage two with several observationally distinguishable borrower classes the firms in a borrower class are redlined only under circumstances which imply that they would not get credit in a perfect capital market either die rendite funktion kann im stiglitz weiss 1981 modell nicht so wie das in der literatur durchgangig angenommen wird hugelformig sein das hat wichtige implikationen fur die moglichkeit von kreditrationierung einerseits und fur die moglichkeit des ausschlusses ganzer kreditnehmergruppen vom kapitalmarkt andererseits mit nur einer klasse von kreditnehmern erfolgt die kreditvergabe in zwei stufen wahrend auf der ersten stufe eine ubernachfrage vorliegen kann herrscht auf der zweiten stufe marktraumung bei mehreren unterscheidbaren kreditnehmerklassen wird eine klasse nur unter den bedingungen vom kreditmarkt ausgeschlossen bei deren vorliegen sie auch in einem vollkommenen kreditmarkt keinen kredit erhalten wurde

face and favor the chinese power game western research on interpersonal behavior patterns and rules of exchange needs to move beyond the assumption of isolated individuals socialized to make rational decisions on the basis of self inte

arbitrage pricing theory and utility stock returns this paper presents some new evidence that arbitrage pricing theory may lead to different and better estimates of expected return than the capital asset pricing model particularly in the case of utility stock returns results for monthly portfolio returns for 1971 1979 lead to the conclusion that regulators should not adopt the single factor risk approach of the capm as the principal measure of risk but give greater weight to apt whose multiple factors provide a better indication of asset risk and a better estimate of expected return notwithstanding initial skepticism and recent challenges the capital asset pricing model capm has been used to develop project screening rates value companies measure the impact of policy change on risk and construct portfolios recently the federal energy regulatory commission ferc proposed it as the principal measure of risk for the electric utilities it regulates it would be ironic for acceptance of capm by policymakers to occur just as arbitrage pricing theory apt threatens to replace it as an explanation of the relationship between return and risk and it would be a pity if ferc were to adopt the single risk factor approach of capm when it could be demonstrated that the multiple factors of apt provide a better indication of asset risk and a better estimate of expected return this paper presents some new evidence that apt may lead to different and better estimates of expected return than capm and that it may be more helpful to policymakers as a result we describe capm and apt note work done by others show how estimates of required returns for utilities developed by applying each model may differ and finally report the evidence that convinces us that if one model is to be relied upon for policy purposes apt would be the better choice

deposit insurance a reconsideration abstract this paper undertakes a simple general equilibrium analysis of the consequences of deposit insurance programs the way in which they are priced and the way in which they fund revenue shortfalls in our economy the central issue in analyzing deposit insurance is how the government will make up any fdic losses deposit insurance premia matter only in so far as they affect the level of implied fdic revenue shortfalls moreover local variations in the magnitude of fdic losses will generically be irrelevant for the determination of any equilibrium quantities that affect agent welfare however large enough changes in these losses can matter there is no presumption that keeping these shortfalls low is a good idea finally we show that multiple pareto ranked equilibria can be observed the potential for multiplicity of equilibria may depend on components of fdic policy our analysis provides counterexamples to the following propositions 1 actuarially fair pricing of deposit insurance is always desirable 2 implicit fdic subsidization of banks through deposit insurance is always undesirable 3 large fdic losses are necessarily symptomatic of a poorly designed deposit insurance system 4 risk based deposit insurance premia can easily be used to reduce moral hazard problems associated with deposit insurance provision

the salomon brothers electric utility model another challenge to market efficiency in each year from 1977 to 1981 portfolios of stocks identified as undervalued by salomon brothers inc s electric utility model outperformed portfolios identified as overvalued furthermore monthly returns on the undervalued portfolios ranked in the top three deciles in 34 of 58 months whereas the most overvalued portfolios ranked in the lowest three deciles in 31 of the 58 months the performance of the portfolios cannot be explained in terms of traditional risk measures the two most undervalued portfolios fall in the middle of the sample in terms of beta and offer excess returns after adjustment for systematic risk the most overvalued portfolio has the highest beta and negative risk adjusted returns tests of the portfolios using arbitrage pricing theory risk factors yield similar results could risk factors other than the market wide variables captured by the capital asset pricing model and arbitrage pricing theory affect the model s results undervaluation by the salomon model does appear to be associated with small firm size and large investment in uncompleted nuclear plant even when these variables are taken into account however significant association between undervaluation and high return remains finally inclusion of transaction costs diminishes the returns on the most undervalued portfolios but does not destroy their return advantage the evidence indicates that the model distinguishes between over and undervalued stocks and suggests that investors may make profitable use of this information

some evidence on the empirical significance of credit rationing this paper examines the credit rationing debate using detailed contract information on over one million commercial bank loans from 1977 to 1988 while commercial loan rates are sticky consistent with rationing this stickiness varies with loan contract terms in ways that are not predicted by equilibrium credit rationing theory in addition the proportion of new loans issued under commitment does not increase significantly when credit markets are tight despite the fact that borrowers without commitments can be rationed whereas commitment borrowers are contractually insulated from rationing overall the data suggest that equilibrium rationing is not a significant macroeconomic phenomenon

credit and equity rationing in markets with adverse selection previous theories of financial market rationing focussed on a single market either the credit or the equity market an interesting question is whether credit and equity rationing are mutually compatible and how they interact we consider a model with two dimensional asymmetric information where entrepreneurs have private information about both the expected returns and the risk of their projects we show that credit and equity rationing may occur individually or simultaneously moreover competition between the two markets may generate the adverse selection that leads to rationing outcomes