interfuel substitution biomass consumption economic growth and sustainable development evidence from brazil abstract this paper examines the possibilities of substituting the fossil fuels including natural gas coal and oil for biomass consumption in brazil for the period 1980 2015 we used the ridge regression procedure to generate the parameter estimates from a second order taylor series approximation of log linear trans log specification for robustness sake we constructed an index of sustainable development sd as additional regressand alongside the conventional gross domestic product gdp overall the results show strong evidence of substitution possibilities between biomass and the fossil fuels in both the gdp and the sd models indicating that brazil can continue with its growth and sustainability agenda by using more biomass and less fossil fuels the results also show that the sd model gives a more robust output elasticity estimates as it detects the inherent negative effect of some of the fossil fuels on the economy that are not directly observable in the gdp model

collateral heterogeneity in risk attitude and the credit market equilibrium abstract this paper examines the argument that the availability of collateral rules out credit rationing a model of the credit market with ex ante asymmetric information and heterogeneous entrepreneurs attitudes toward risk is set up it is shown that due to the interplay between project choice and entrepreneurs preferences using collateral as a signal to screen safer projects may prove impossible instead a partially separating two contract equilibrium with rationing at one contract emerges contrary to previous theoretical research and consistently with conventional wisdom and systematic evidence the use of collateral is never negatively correlated with project risk

collateral and credit rationing a review of recent empirical studies as a guide for future research abstract the relationship between firms and banks often suffers from informational opacity that may result in credit rationing in theory providing collateral to the bank can have a mitigating effect on these informational asymmetries and thus solve the credit rationing problem even though collateral is already a widespread debt contract feature recent trends predict that in the future collateral will become even more important for informationally opaque firms the aim of this paper is twofold first we provide a review of the recently growing empirical research on collateral as a remedy for credit rationing second we would like to pinpoint gaps and limitations in current empirical research most studies contend with a flawed research design by not distinguishing between business and personal collateral and excluding other information opaqueness reducing tools such as the strength of the relationship between borrower and lender loan maturity and covenants we also discuss the limitations of using a single equation estimation method and the usefulness of incorporating interaction effects into the estimation models finally we provide suggestions for fruitful research avenues that would fill these gaps and enrich the empirical knowledge in this research domain

biofuels and sustainable energy development in brazil summary through the assessment of three decades of the alcohol program in brazil the paper shows that adequate public policies regarding biomass production can deliver direct benefits like energy security improvement foreign exchange savings and local employment generation reduced urban air pollution and avoided co2 emissions moreover the paper shows that brazilian produced ethanol has faced economies of scale technical progress and productivity gains and is no longer dependent on subsidies to be competitive the paper also examines the potential in brazil for fostering other biofuels namely biodiesel obtained from vegetable oils as well as their implications on sustainable energy development

if we knew ability how would we tax individuals abstract the suggestion to tax people on earnings capacity instead of earnings has been around for a long time and is attractive in terms of economic efficiency in this paper we reflect on the feasibility of such a system and give an exploratory empirical implementation we apply the leyden welfare function of income a survey based measure of an individual s welfare associated with income to derive implications for ability taxation under the assumption that iq and schooling reflect earnings capacity we derive the tax functions using different criteria to distribute the utility loss due to taxation

bounds testing approach to analyzing the environment kuznets curve hypothesis with structural beaks the role of biomass energy consumption in the united states abstract this paper re examines the specification of the environmental kuznets curve ekc for the us economy by accounting for the presence of a major renewable energy source and trade openness over the period 1960 2016 biomass energy consumption and trade openness as well as oil prices are considered as additional determinants of economic growth and consequentially of co 2 emissions the bounds testing approach to cointegration is used to examine the long run relationship between the variables in the presence of structural breaks the causal relationship between the variables is investigated by applying the vecm granger causality test and accommodating structural breaks the results confirm the presence of cointegration between the variables moreover the relationship between economic growth and co 2 emissions is not only inverted u shaped but also n shaped in the presence of structural breaks and biomass biomass energy consumption lowers co 2 emissions exports imports and trade openness are also environment friendly the causality analysis underscores a feedback effect between biomass energy consumption and co 2 emissions economic growth still granger causes co 2 emissions in this new setup

the economics of small business finance the roles of private equity and debt markets in the financial growth cycle abstract this article examines the economics of financing small business in private equity and debt markets firms are viewed through a financial growth cycle paradigm in which different capital structures are optimal at different points in the cycle we show the sources of small business finance and how capital structure varies with firm size and age the interconnectedness of small firm finance is discussed along with the impact of the macroeconomic environment we also analyze a number of research and policy issues review the literature and suggest topics for future research

the incidence of secured debt evidence from the small business community critics claim that theories of secured debt fail to explain the widespread use of collateral because they incorrectly predict when a loan will be secured this paper provides the first rigorous statistical test of the transaction cost models of secured debt data from two samples of over 1 000 small business loans generally support the common set of predictions of these theories the incidence of secured debt is positively related to probability of default loan size loan maturity and marketability of assets changes in the legal and economic environment also alter firms decisions regarding the pledging of collateral

energy consumption fuel substitution technical change and economic growth implications for co2 mitigation in egypt abstract energy consumption propels economic growth but the level of co2 emissions associated with a fossil dominated energy structure raises concerns for the fight against climate change to draw consensus this study develops a translog causality based model in order to study causation between electricity natural gas petroleum and economic growth in egypt in addition the models results are used to estimate the substitution possibilities between various energy pairs and to subsequently test the co2 mitigation benefits arising from fuel substitution results support a bidirectional relationship between all energy types and economic growth in egypt and suggest also that these energy types are substitutes although technical progress is estimated to be a bit slow varying between 4 5 and 7 5 there appears to be substantial co2 emissions mitigation benefits from fuel substitution amounting to reductions in the range of 1 5 and 2 2 million metric tons under a 5 investment scenario and 2 5 and 4 5 million metric tons under a 10 investment scenario these results have broader implications for energy conservation policies and industrial merger policies in developing countries moreover by studying technical change insights are provided on future co2 mitigation potential driven by energy efficiency

economic growth and interfactor interfuel substitution in korea this paper investigates the impact of increases in oil consumption and changes in wage rates on the interfactor interfuel substitution in korea a two stage translog cost function is estimated to incorporate the feedback effect between the interfactor and interfuel substitution empirical results show that the substitutability complementarity relationships among factors and fuels exhibit substantially different patterns before and after 1989

a dynamic econometric model of thailand manufacturing energy demand the purpose of this article is to employ the dynamic translog framework to model inter factor and inter fuel energy demand for the thai manufacturing sector the denny et al 1981 and lynk 1989 framework which proposes a dynamic adjustment for capital stock is employed to motivate the estimated of factor demand and fuel share equations three factors energy labour and capital and five fuel types fuel oil diesel oil liquified petroleum gas lpg electricity and coal and lignite are examined regression diagnostics support the empirical specification numerous factor and fuel substitution possibilities are identified with some policy implications described

lending to small businesses the role of loan maturity in addressing information problems we investigate what determines the maturity of lines of credit to small businesses our results provide strong support for the hypothesis that shorter loan maturities serve to mitigate the problems associated with borrower risk and asymmetric information that are typical of small business lending we find that maturity is shorter for firm owners that have poor credit histories are older and less experienced and for firms that are more informationally opaque supporting the notion that collateral and maturity are substitute mechanisms in mitigating agency problems we also find strong evidence that maturity increases with collateral pledges that personal collateral is associated with longer maturities than business collateral and that collateral types that better mitigate agency problems reduce the sensitivity of loan maturity to informational asymmetries and risk finally while it is argued that relationship lending may mitigate information asymmetry we find no relation between loan maturity and stronger firm creditor ties

how to reduce energy intensity in china s heavy industry evidence from a seemingly uncorrelated regression abstract with rapid development and large scale urbanization china s environmental and resource constraints are becoming increasingly severe compared to other industries china s heavy industry is energy intensive and emission intensive which exerts pressure on energy conservation policies in this paper by establishing a theoretical model of the impact factors of energy intensity we investigate the effects of energy prices ownership structure and industrial concentration and r d investment on the energy intensity of china s heavy industry and seemingly unrelated regression model was used in the estimation of corresponding coefficients the results show that increase in energy prices decrease in state owned enterprises and increase in industrial concentration may reduce the energy intensity of the industry also the study points to evidence that an increase in r d investment may reduce the oil intensity of heavy industry

who should buy long term bonds according to conventional wisdom long term bonds are appropriate for conservative long term investors this paper develops a model of optimal consumption and portfolio choice for infinite lived investors with recursive utility who face stochastic interest rates solves the model using an approximate analytical method and evaluates conventional wisdom as risk aversion increases the myopic component of risky asset demand disappears but the intertemporal hedging component does not conservative investors hold assets to hedge the risk that real interest rates will decline long term inflation indexed bonds are most suitable for this purpose but nominal bonds may also be used if inflation risk is low

loan collateral decisions and corporate borrowing costs we examine the relation between borrowing costs and the presence of loan collateral we find the presence of collateral increases with default risk consistent with low quality borrowers reducing their risks and borrowing costs through the use of collateral by explicitly controlling for the interdependence between the decision to pledge collateral and borrowing costs we find that secured loans have predicted spreads substantially lower than if they had been made on an unsecured basis alternatively loans made on an unsecured basis have spreads not substantially different from if they had been secured the evidence suggests that collateral pledging decisions are generally consistent with borrowing cost minimization

interfuel substitution a meta analysis interfuel substitutability has been of longstanding interest to the energy economics and policy community however no quantitative meta analysis has yet been carried out of this literature this paper fills this gap by analyzing a broad sample of studies of interfuel substitution in the industrial sector manufacturing industry or subindustries or macro economy of a variety of developed and developing economies publication bias is controlled for by including the primary study sample size in the meta regression results for the shadow elasticities of substitution between coal oil gas and electricity for forty six primary studies show that at the level of the industrial sector there are easy substitution possibilities between all the fuel pairs with the exception of gas electricity and coal electricity substitution possibilities seem more constrained at the macro level and less constrained in sub industries estimates also vary across countries publication bias does not seem to be present but model and data specification issues very significantly affect the estimates derived by each individual study estimates from cross section regressions are generally largest fixed effects panel estimates intermediate in magnitude and time series estimates are mostly much smaller econometric research suggests that the fixed effects estimates are likely the best among the existing studies though biased downwards

financing difficulties for smes and credit rationing an expanded model of mortgage loans with asymmetric information this article presents a new model of mortgage loans under reasonable assumptions a several key variables that affects the success of a project such as project risk total investment lending rate

secured lending and default risk equilibrium analysis policy implications and empirical results the authors examine collateral in a competitive equilibrium in which borrowers can choose hidden actions and may additionally possess hidden knowledge apart from explaining the widespread use of collateral despite deadweight costs they show that an increase in the riskless interest rate causes equilibrium loan rates and collateral requirements to increase a decline in the deadweight costs of collateral reduces the equilibrium collateral use under moral hazard and an increase in the borrower s project size reduces equilibrium collateral use under moral hazard some of these predictions are tested and found to be supported by the data copyright 1991 by royal economic society

do binary collateral outcome variables proxy collateral levels the case of collateral from start ups and existing smes this paper is designed to test whether the factors which affect the decision to collateralise business loans affect the level of collateralisation in the same manner if the level of collateralisation does matter the provision of collateral becomes more than a goodwill gesture to placate banks and more a device to ameliorate the risk of lending we use a thitherto unseen dataset from a u k retail bank comprising 4 618 transfers and start ups ts group who applied for business loans and overdrafts between january 1998 and january 2000 the control sample comprised 9 596 existing businesses from the same period our unique dataset permits an analysis of this kind for the first time because it contains a continuous variable for collateral unlike previous studies existing businesses exhibit a higher frequency binary outcome and level tobit outcome of collateral than the businesses who are start ups or have transferred from another bank only when distortions within the data are not controlled for these distortions negate the value of binary collateral variables factors such as business type and loan purpose are useful at explaining the likelihood of a borrower having his loan collateralised and the level of collateralisation for borrowers who provided collateral or not

the role of legal status in influencing bank financing and new firm growth this paper examines the characteristics of new firm founders who use loans and overdrafts from the clearing banks to finance initially their business bank lending to new firms appears unrelated to the personal characteristics of founders but related to whether individuals provide personal savings and the legal status of the business this contrasts with the factors which influence the growth of new firms here the founder s age employment status and birthplace are associated with larger firms the only variable which appears to influence consistently both bank lending and the employment growth in firms is whether or not the business is a limited company

loan collateral corporate investment and business cycle abstract collateral and loan rates are observed to be highly cyclical in their use for bank lending the effects of such cyclicality on corporate investment are analyzed in this paper using a dynamic model we find that more collateral causes firms to select riskier safer projects if the loan rate rises above falls below the expected investment return we show that the incentive effect of loan rates becomes stronger with greater collateral with the two credit terms having larger incentive effects on lower quality firms these results offer a new explanation for why lenient collateral policies are associated with rising loan rates in economic upturns but stricter collateral requirements come with falling loan rates during downturns

evaluation of welfare functions of environmental amenities a case of forest biomass fuels in mount kilimanjaro tanzania abstract this study is an empirical investigation of welfare functions of forest biomass fuels in mount kilimanjaro tanzania the want parameter of welfare function was found to vary with household s current fuel consumption which reflects people s amenity aspirations shift with the amenity level attained furthermore current wood consumption and welfare sensitivity parameter are also influenced by individual s environmental entitlements rather than economic entitlements resource scarcity induced by physical scarcity or institutional legal constraints leads to resource conserving attitude but not without loss in perceived well being communal conservation of energy is also observed whereby large households are more energy conserving than small households regarding biomass use and consumption monetary income does not guarantee satisfaction but heightens people s wants thus rural development programs should not focus on economic empowerment only but also on environmental sustainability and fair resource use rules

the effect of the bankruptcy reform act of 1978 on small business loan pricing abstract the bankruptcy reform act of 1978 contains several provisions that can affect the cost of producing loans for financial intermediaries in a competitive lending market the additional monitoring and expected foreclosure costs imposed by the change in the bankruptcy law should be passed on to the borrower using survey data from a sample of small business loans from commercial banks evidence is presented that the enactment of the new law resulted in higher contract rates of interest

asymmetric valuations and the role of collateral in loan agreements loan contracts with provision for collateral are of two general types in one the collateral may be an existing asset of the borrowing firm which is pledged to a lender in the event of default in this case collateral does not increase the assets that the borrower would lose if there is default since all the borrower s assets are attachable therefore the expected marginal cost to the borrower of providing an additional unit of collateral includes principally transactions costs associated with the collateral l this describes the usual type of commercial loan arrangement with the collateral being either equipment real estate accounts receivable or inventories in the other type of loan contract the collateral is an additional asset that is given up by the borrower if there is default that is in addition to the usual assets that are available to its lenders the borrower assigns as collateral to a creditor an asset that would normally not be legally attachable this arrangement is more common in small business loans that are secured by a personal asset e g a house of the entrepreneur likewise debt issued by a legally separate subsidiary may be secured by an asset of the parent firrn in these cases the expected marginal cost to the borrower the owner manager of the small firm or the parent corporation in the latter example of providing an additional unit of collateral

product market competition and the financing of new ventures this paper examines the interaction between venture risk product market competition and the entrepreneur s choice between bank financing and venture capital vc financing under bank financing a debt type contract emerges as optimal which allows the entrepreneur to retain full control of the venture and thus yields strong effort incentives as long as the entrepreneur can service the debt repayment however this leads to liquidation in the case of default making the venture s success quite sensitive to exogenous even temporary shocks that may hinder debt repayment under vc financing an equity type contract emerges as optimal although it is not sensitive to exogenous shocks this contract requires the entrepreneur to share a fraction of the rents with the financier thus yielding lower effort incentives for the entrepreneur there exists a threshold level of venture risk such that bank financing is optimal if and only if venture risk is below that threshold product market competition increases the value of stronger entrepreneurial incentives and thus increases the maximum level of risk the entrepreneur is willing to take before switching from bank financing to vc financing this is a robust result that is shown to hold in various models of competition including the hotelling salop dixit stiglitz and cournot to bertrand switch this paper was accepted by lee fleming entrepreneurship and innovation

an empirical analysis of the determinants of corporate debt ownership structure i examine the relation between corporate debt ownership structure and several firm characteristics suggested by recent theory the results demonstrate the importance of monitoring and information costs the likelihood and costs of inefficient liquidation and borrowers incentives in affecting firms debt source preferences several theoretical predictions receive support while others do not the results also suggest important differences between bank and private non bank debt which contrasts with most theoretical models additionally i find evidence of systematic use of bank debt by firms with access to public debt suggesting the benefits attributed to bank debt in theoretical models remain important after firms gain access to public debt markets although different lenders appear to have different maturity preferences the results also suggest debt maturity and debt ownership decisions may be separable

relationship lending and sme financing in the continental european bank based system this paper analyzes the relationship between banks and smes in the continental european bank based system we find that smes with longer bank relationships have enhanced access to loans but at the same time they bear a higher cost for their debt we also find that firms maintaining two bank relationships get the cheapest debt which establishes a limit for the degree of concentration of bank relationships our results also show that the existence of trust between firm and bank improves access to financing and reduces the borrowing costs whereas it increases the likelihood that guarantees will have to be provided as a consequence it seems that a relationship based on trust is a better strategy to improve smes access to finance than the establishment of longer or more concentrated relationships

financial distress and the business cycle in this paper we argue that firms financial distress should play a greater role in the macroeconomic analysis of the business cycle we provide a non technical account of a general equilibrium model that exhibits financially driven equilibrium cycles we show that the empirical evidence is widely supportive of the key hypothesis and implications of our approach we use the model in order to evaluate the effects of several policy measures it turns out that deepening the market for second hand capital goods subsidizing the interest payments of companies which start up when financial conditions are tight and bailing out some companies in default can indeed stabilize the economy by way of generalization we may say that the policy reaction to a financially driven bust should be accommodating

a pooled dynamic analysis of interfuel substitution in industrial energy demand by the g 7 countries a dynamic version of considine s 1990 linear logit model is used to obtain theoretically consistent estimates of long run price elasticities from pooled intercountry data on industrial energy consumption this model also provides a rare direct estimate of the important rate of dynamic adjustment revealing a median lag of ten years the long run demands for oil and coal are the most elastic and the strongest channels for interfuel substitution are between oil and natural gas with no significant evidence of complementarity between fuels

new firm growth and bank financing this paper examines the extent to which lucas ideas on human capital and jovanovic theorising on learning can provide further insights into the development of small firms it focuses exclusively upon newly established independent firms our evidence from two surveys is that bank lending to new firms is unrelated to many of the personal characteristics of founders which have been argued by other researchers to relate to small firm performance instead lending appears to be more related to whether or not the founder can or chooses to use personal savings and the legal status of the business

oil shocks and the dynamics of substitution adjustments of industrial fuels in the us this paper investigates substitution among such alternate fuels as coal natural gas and electricity during the actual oil price increases of 1970s these substitution adjustments are assumed to be dynamic and modelled by a partial adjustment structure this dynamic structure is incorporated into a translog cost technology short and long run price elasticities are estimated by identifying inter and intra industry variations the models are estimated with a sample of 88 pooled observations including distillate and residual oils purchased by eleven 2 digit manufacturing groups 1974 81 models are estimates are strictly negative these own price elasticities range from long to short run 2 93 to 2 55 for distillate oil 0 698 to 1 53 for residual oil 0 533 to 0 011 for coal 0 235 to 0 213 for natural gas to 0 888 to 0 845 for electricity estimastes of both short run and long run cross price elasticities suggest that coal and electric energy are the prominent substitutes for fuel oils w

the american economic association dues structure because consumers have an incentive to misrepresent their incomes and accurate information about consumers incomes is costly for sellers to obtain income based pricing of goods or services seems unlikely to survive for long indeed income based pricing is extremely rare however the american economic association s dues structure in which members voluntarily pay dues according to income has survived for twenty years the authors survey results reveal that while some cheating does occur there is substantial compliance with the income based dues structure they offer several explanations for their findings

the relationship between u k banks and their small business customers much emphasis is placed upon the benefits to both parties of a good relationship between banks and their small business customers having explained the significance of smes in the u k economy the papers goes on to consider briefly some of the arguments which underpin the rationale for these relationships the roles of information and communication are discussed and the poor co ordination between banks smes and their accountants is highlighted evidence from over 6 000 small businesses in response to the forum of private business survey in 1994 is then presented this demonstrates the strong positive association between more participative relationships and more positive perceptions of their banks by firms finally it is suggested that a virtuous circle of information and communication could be established if the parties cooperate in a systematic process of risk assessment

commitment lending under asymmetric information theory and tests on u k startup data u k business startup data is used to examine the role of contract parameters in solving the bank s problem of lending under asymmetric information margins are found to be a direct function of the probability of failure and an inverse function of security for given loan size consistently with collateral being invoked to solve the moral hazard problem business survival is also found to be enhanced by owner equity inputs for given debt again consistent with a requirement for owner financial inputs to enhance unobservable effort security rises along with loan size and survival chances a finding consistent with a a firm loan size effect larger borrowers have lower marginal admin cost to the bank and with b positive borrower self selection better borrowers offer collateral because they are less likely to experience forfeiture observable business characteristics are found to play an important intermediary role in the solution to the moral hazard problem more mature proprietors have more experience business commitment assets for borrowing and the willingness to use them for loan collateral their contract parameters reflect these facts

the determinants of contract terms in bank revolving credit agreements the paper examines the determinants of contract terms on bank revolving credit agree ments revolvers of medium large publicly traded companies we model the duration maturity secured status and pricing decisions within a simultaneous decision frame work thereby overcoming the biased and inconsistent estimates in prior single equation studies of debt contract terms we find strong interrelationships between contract terms with significant bi directional relationships between duration and secured status and be tween the all in spread and commitment fees and a unidirectional relationship from both duration and secured status to all in spread we also illustrate how several single equa tion studies of contract terms draw incorrect conclusions because of their inappropriate assumption that other contract terms and leverage were exogenous finally our results sup port the hypothesis that the setting of contract terms plays an important role in alleviating contracting problems

energy conservation in china s light industry sector evidence from inter factor and inter fuel substitution following the impressive economic achievements in the past decades china is faced with energy and environmental challenges to carry out more effective and targeted energy policies the heterogeneities of different industrial sectors are of great importance the energy consumption of china s light industry in 2012 was 316 million tons of coal equivalents which is about the energy consumption of south korea the paper explored the substitution relationships between various input factors and fuel sources and showed that electricity price reform is crucial for energy conservation in china s light industry then the dynamics of energy intensity change is examined by decomposing energy intensity into budget effect substitution effect output effect and technology advance effect the result revealed that the substitution effect between input factors is a key driving force however technology progress seems to contribute very little for future energy policy alternatives promoting the implementation of new conservation technology and electricity price reform may be effective measures

dynamic translog and linear logit models a factor demand analysis of interfuel substitution in us industrial energy demand abstract we compare and contrast two popular dynamic flexible functional forms for cost functions the translog and the logit j bus econ stat 8 1990 347 353 using data on us industrial energy demand from 1960 to 1992 which has been analysed by previous studies energy econ 11 1989 89 94 appl econ 21 1989 931 945 j bus econ stat 13 1995 459 465 we show the crucial role played by different dynamic formulations of the translog in this analysis of factor demands with respect to rates of dynamic adjustment and substitution possibilities we conclude that the poor performance of the dynamic translog relative to the dynamic logit cannot be explained solely by dynamic model mis specification or the inclusion of price unresponsive non energy fuel use data our most robust empirical result is that coal and oil are substitutes

governing biofuels in brazil a comparison of ethanol and biodiesel policies over the last decade brazil has implemented a new and ambitious biofuel program the national program of production and use of biodiesel pnpb when launching this program in 2004 the government stated that it wanted to avoid the same kind of geographical concentration single crop focus dominance of agribusiness and exclusion of family farmers that have occurred with bioethanol production through the proalcool policy since 1975 this paper compares the life histories of the bioethanol and the biodiesel policies of brazil by analyzing their substantive policy content the power and politics of actors that struggle for the design and implementation of the policies and the polity in terms the organization and institutionalization of the policies the paper concludes that both policies have become submerged by and dependent on the polity and politics of primarily the energy and agricultural sectors that operate as the two semi autonomous governance fields this submerging has shaped the substantive contents of biofuels policies and explains why the 2004 biodiesel policy pnpb in spite of its objectives for social inclusion and rural development faces similar problems in implementation as its predecessor the 1975 bioethanol policy proalcool

organizational distance and use of collateral for business loans abstract this paper examines the effect of organizational distance i e distance between the headquarters of the bank that grants a loan and the location of the borrower on the use of collateral for business loans by spanish banks on the basis of the recent lender based theory of collateral inderst r mueller h m 2007 a lender based theory of collateral journal of financial economics 84 826 859 we find that for the average borrower the use of collateral is higher for loans granted by local lenders than by distant ones we also show that the difference in the likelihood of collateral in loans granted by local lenders relative to distant lenders is higher among older and larger firms than respectively younger and smaller firms we also find that banks use lending technologies that are different for near and for distant firms in response to organizational diseconomies

collateral relationship lending and family firms prior research suggested that relationship lending could play a role in solving asymmetric information problems between borrower and lender other studies suggest a relationship between family ownership and the shareholder bondholder agency conflict the present paper investigates the impact of relationship characteristics family ownership and their interaction effects upon the use of collateral in sme lending we examine the determinants of collateral as well as the determinants of the choice between business and personal collateral using decision tree analysis the results reveal that relationship characteristics have a significant influence but not always in the direction as expected moreover they do not seem to be the primary determinants in our classification models the most important determinants in both classification models seem to be the loan amount total assets and the family versus non family firm distinction in addition we differentiate between line of credit and non line of credit loans and find significant differences between these decision trees

business collateral and personal commitments in sme lending abstract using a database of sme credit approvals from a large belgian bank this paper extends the empirical evidence on the determinants of collateral by examining the determinants of business collateral simultaneously with the determinants of personal collateral commitments our results suggest that firm and relationship characteristics seem to be more important determinants of collateral commitment protection than loan and lender characteristics family firms are more likely to offer a higher degree of collateral commitment protection while introducing competition between banks decreases this likelihood the collateral requirement decreases in the length of the bank borrower relationship furthermore trade credit seems to have a signalling effect the lazy banks hypothesis was not supported our results suggest that beside risk arguments also commercial arguments help explain the pledging of collateral using a continuation ratio logit model we discover several differences in the determinants of the collateralisation decision and the determinants of the type of collateral commitments

elasticity of substitution and technical efficiency evidence from the us electricity generation abstractthe implications of national or regional energy policies for technical efficiency and environmental outcomes in electricity generation depend on fossil fuel input substitution this study u