women s empowerment and domestic abuse experimental evidence from vietnam abstract intimate partner violence is an important global health problem that policy makers seek to address by a variety of interventions including efforts to promote women s empowerment we use data from a randomized control trial in vietnam and find that this strategy may backfire women who participated in a gender and entrepreneurship training program suffer more frequent abuse than women in the control group we conjecture that increased female income is the mechanism linking the training program to domestic violence we also make a methodological contribution and show that the outcomes of our impact analysis depend on how we measure intimate partner violence

on the benefits of concurrent lending and underwriting this paper examines whether there are efficiencies that benefit issuers and underwriters when a financial intermediary concurrently lends to an issuer while also underwriting its public securities offering we find issuers particularly noninvestmentgrade issuers for whom informational economies of scope are likely to be large benefit through lower underwriter fees and discounted loan yield spreads underwriters both commercial banks as well as investment banks engage in concurrent lending and provide price discounts albeit in different ways we find concurrent lending helps underwriters build relationships increasing the probability of receiving current and future business for many years the 1933 glass steagall act prevented commercial banks from underwriting corporate bonds and equities due to the relaxation and recent repeal of the act many commercial banks have acquired investment banks or developed investment banking capabilities internally to create universal banks that can offer an array of financial services the entry of commercial banks into underwriting markets has increased the potential for financial institutions to offer both lending and underwriting services in particular it has become increasingly common for financial intermediaries to provide loans to a firm while also underwriting the firm s public securities in fact concurrent lending and underwriting has increased substantially over time in 1994 only 1 of seasoned equity issuers received a loan from their underwriter at around the time of issuance but by 2001 over 20 of all deals were concurrent the movement toward concurrent lending and underwriting raises a host of interesting questions first why are deals concurrent

bond underwriting by banks and conflicts of interest evidence from japan during the pre war period abstract article 65 of the securities and exchange law of japan which was carried into effect in 1948 prohibited banks from underwriting corporate securities partially because of the concern that combining the banking and securities businesses might result in a potential conflict of interest this paper studies the pricing and long term default performance of industrial bonds underwritten by commercial banks the industrial bank of japan ibj and trust firms as compared to those underwritten by investment houses during the pre war period in japan when banks were allowed to underwrite industrial bonds the evidence rejects the concern about the conflicts of interest

is the glass steagall act justified a study of the u s experience with universal banking before the glass steagall act of 1933 removed commercial banks from the securities underwriting business we evaluate the argument for the separation of commercial and investment banking that conflicts of interest induce commercial banks to fool the public into investing in securities which turn out to be of low quality a comparison of the performance of securities underwritten by commercial and investment banks prior to the act shows no evidence of this instead the public appears to have rationally accounted for the possibility of conflicts of interest and this appears to have constrained the banks to underwrite high quality securities jel g21 g24 n22

banking relationships and access to equity capital markets evidence from japan s main bank system abstract we study the role of banking relationships in ipo underwriting when a firm in japan goes public it can engage an investment bank that is related through a common main bank or can select an alternative investment bank the main bank relationship can be an efficient way for the investment bank to acquire information generated by the main bank but may give rise to conflicts of interest we find that main bank relationships give small issuers increased access to equity capital markets but that issuers of large ipos often switch to non related investment banks that are capable of managing large offerings while investment banks seek to exploit bargaining power with related issuers issuers respond to expected high issue cost by switching to non related investment banks the net result is that total issue costs through related and non related investment banks are similar with respect to aftermarket performance and use of proceeds we find no evidence of conflict of interest or self dealing for either the main bank or the investment bank

gender training and female empowerment experimental evidence from vietnam we combine an rct and a lab in the field experiment to explore how participating in an entrepreneurship and gender training affects the intra household bargaining position of women while male preferences dominate household decisions the training attenuates the bargaining gap considerably inviting husbands to participate in the training does not further improve outcomes

safety net losses from abandoning glass steagall restrictions this paper evaluates the redistribution of gains surrounding regulatory relaxations in 1996 and 1997 and ultimate passage of the financial services modernization act fsma of 1999 gains in financial institution stocks may come from projected increases in efficiency increases in the bargaining power of financial institutions or greater access to the federal safety net for customers seeking improved access to capital markets gains in efficiency should result in increased benefits but increases in bank bargaining power could increase funding costs and or decrease capital market access customers may also lose as taxpayers who support the federal safety net this paper finds evidence of potential taxpayer losses and increased bank bargaining power especially vis a vis credit constrained customers for whom safety net subsidies are unlikely to be shifted forward the stock prices of credit constrained customers declined during fsma event windows and in event windows associated with regulatory relaxations

bank underwriting of debt securities modern evidence this article examines debt securities underwritten by section 20 subsidiaries of bank holding companies relative to those underwritten by investment houses consistent with a net certification effects for banks bank underwriting of lower credit rated firms to whom the bank lends results in relatively higher prices lower yields we find no evidence of conflicts of interest even when an issue is used to repay bank debt further banks bring a relatively larger proportion of small issues to the market contrary to the contention that universal banking stunts availability of finance to small firms bank underwritings appear to benefit small firms article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

expanding credit access using randomized supply decisions to estimate the impacts expanding access to commercial credit is a key ingredient of financial development strategies there is less consensus on whether expanding access to consumer credit helps borrowers particularly when loans are extended at high interest rates popular skepticism about unproductive usurious lending is fueled by research highlighting behavioral biases that may induce overborrowing we estimate the impacts of expanding access to consumer credit at a 200 annual percentage rate apr using a field experiment and follow up data collection the randomly assigned marginal loans produced significant net benefits for borrowers across a wide range of outcomes there is also some evidence that the loans were profitable the author 2009 published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies all rights reserved for permissions please e mail journals permissions oxfordjournals org oxford university press

what s different about banks abstract negotiable certificates of deposit cd s trade in the capital market in competition with other securities like commercial paper and bankers acceptances if cd s must pay lenders competitive monetary interest the reserve tax on cd s is borne by bank borrowers viability of the tax means there must be something special about bank loans that makes some borrowers willing to pay higher interest rates than those on other securities of equivalent risk moreover there must be something special about banks that prevents other intermediaries from competing to assure that it never pays to finance loans with cd s

collateral loan quality and bank risk abstract most commercial loans are made on a secured basis yet little is known about the relationship between collateral and credit risk several theoretical studies find that when borrowers have private information about risk the lowest risk borrowers tend to pledge collateral in contrast conventional wisdom holds that when risk is observable the highest risk borrowers tend to pledge collateral an additional issue is whether secured loans as opposed to secured borrowers tend to be safer or riskier than unsecured loans empirical evidence presented here strongly suggests that collateral is most often associated with riskier borrowers riskier loans and riskier banks

do the equity holding and soundness of bank underwriters affect issue costs of seos abstract this paper examines the effects of characteristics of bank underwriters on issue costs in seasoned equity offerings in japan following deregulation in 1999 i find that banks holding loans have a negative effect on price discounts and no effect on underwriting fees however banks equity holdings have no effect on discount rates and a positive effect on underwriting fees furthermore issuers with unhealthy banks pay higher discount rates are more likely to be weak in their ex post operating performance and are less willing to switch underwriters i conclude that the characteristics of banks have different effects on issue costs

conflict of interest in commercial bank security underwritings canadian evidence abstract the recent repeal of the glass steagall act in the us has cleared the way for commercial banks to enter the securities underwriting business many of the concerns that resulted in the original passage of the glass steagall act however still exist one of these is the possible conflict of interest a universal bank faces this paper provides evidence on this issue from the experience of canada following its removal of restrictions on chartered bank ownership of investment dealers both ex ante bond yield comparisons between commercial and investment bank underwritten issues and equity price reactions to bond issue announcements provide no evidence of a conflict of interest

can entrepreneurial activity be taught quasi experimental evidence from central america summary business training is a widely used development tool yet little is known about its impact we study the effects of such a business training program held in central america to deal with endogenous selection into the training program we use a regression discontinuity design exploiting the fact that a fixed number of applicants are taken into the training program based on a pre training score business training significantly increases the probability that an applicant to the workshop starts a business or expands an existing business results also suggest gender heterogeneity as well as the presence of financial constraints

investment bank reputation and the price and quality of underwriting services the relation between investment bank reputation and the price and quality of bond underwriting services is studied here after controlling for endogeneity in issuerunderwriter matching i find that reputable banks obtain lower yields and charge higher fees but issuers net proceeds are higher these relations are pronounced in the junk bond category in which reputable banks underwriting criteria are most stringent these findings suggest that banks underwriting decisions reflect reputation concerns and are thus informative of issue quality they also suggest that economic rents are earned on reputation and thereby provide continued incentives for underwriters to maintain reputation in capital markets investment banks play the important role of bridging firms that need capital with investors that seek investment opportunities intermediation services are valuable first because the banks specialization in the sales and marketing of securities helps lower the issuers transactional costs of borrowing but perhaps more importantly investment banks can provide value through their role in lowering the issuers informational cost of capital this role arises from the information asymmetry that typically exists between insiders the issuing firms and outsiders the investors in security issuance events such an information gap as akerlof demonstrated in his classic 1970 paper at best causes investors to discount the securities and at worst can threaten the existence of the market investment banks standing between the insiders and the outsiders seem to be in the perfect position to reduce information asymmetry and lower the cost of capital that issuers would otherwise have to pay but how does an investment bank solve its own information problem visa vis the investor one solution is the reputation capital at stake for the intermediary a key difference between investment banks and ordinary issuers lily hua fang is from finance area insead this paper is based on a chapter of my dissertation i am indebted to my advisors gary gorton robert holthausen andrew metrick david musto and ayako yasuda for their guidance and support i owe special thanks to an anonymous referee whose insightful comments helped me improve the paper greatly i also want to thank franklin allen john core petra todd jay ritter and robert stambaugh the editor for valuable feedback comments and suggestions from seminar participants at boston college insead

the role of bank advisors in mergers and acquisitions this paper looks at the role of commercial banks and investment banks as financial advisors in their role as lenders and advisors banks can be viewed as serving a certification function however banks acting as both lenders and advisors face a potential conflict of interest that may mitigate or offset any certification effect overall we find evidence of a net certification effect for target firms but conflicts of interest for acquirers in particular target firms earn higher abnormal returns when the target s own bank is hired as merger advisor consistent with the bank s role as certifier of the more informationally opaque target s value to the acquirer in contrast we find no net certification role for acquirers there are at least two possible reasons for this first certification of value may be less important for acquirers because it is the target firm that must be priced in a merger second acquirers may utilize commercial bank advisors in order to obtain access to bank loans to finance activities in the postmerger period thus an acquirer may choose its own bank with whom it has had a prior lending relationship as an advisor in a merger however this choice weakens the certification effect and creates a potential conflict of interest because the advisor s merger advice may be distorted by considerations related to the bank s past and future lending activity

do traditional institutions constrain female entrepreneurship a field experiment on business training in india what constrains the entrepreneurial choices of poor women do traditional institutions pose unique barriers to business growth and profitability for female run enterprises the explosion of microfinance programs which typically target poor female entrepreneurs has drawn attention to these questions indeed one view is that inadequate access to credit prevents women from undertaking high return business activities however one recent empirical study finds low returns to capital in female run micro enterprises suresh de mel david mckenzie and christopher woodruff 2008 thus another view is that the primary barrier to female entrepreneurial success is limited demand for rather than supply of credit with poor women lacking high return means of expanding their businesses for instance due to gender differences in education or business networks women might be relatively uninformed about investment opportunities and untrained in basic cost benefit analysis dean s karlan and martin valdivia 2008 a second possibility is that norms governing women s roles in society limit women s perceptions about what is achievable in the workplace even differences

debtor in possession financing and bankruptcy resolution empirical evidence abstract debtor in possession dip financing is unique secured financing available to firms filing for chapter 11 opponents of dip financing argue that it leads to overinvestment alternatively dip financing can allow funding for positive net present value projects that increase the likelihood of reorganization and reduce time in bankruptcy using a large sample of bankruptcy filings we find little evidence of systematic overinvestment dip financed firms are more likely to emerge from chapter 11 than non dip financed firms dip financed firms have a shorter reorganization period they are quicker to emerge and also quicker to liquidate the reorganization period is even shorter when prior lenders provide the dip financing

ownership concentration in privatized firms the role of disclosure standards auditor choice and auditing infrastructure we rely on a unique data set to estimate the impact of disclosure standards and auditor related characteristics on ownership concentration in 190 privatized firms from 31 countries accounting transparency can help alleviate the agency conflict between minority investors and controlling shareholders which is evident in the extent of ownership concentration since the expropriation of corporate resources by insiders hinges on these private benefits remaining hidden after controlling for other country level and firm level determinants we find weak no evidence that extensive disclosure standards auditor choice reduce ownership concentration in contrast we provide strong robust evidence that ownership concentration is lower in countries with securities laws that specify a lower burden of proof in civil and criminal litigation against auditors consistent with ball s 2001 predictions collectively our research implies that minority investors worldwide value legal institutions that discipline auditors in the event of financial reporting failure over both the presence of a big five auditor and better disclosure standards

do gender and business trainings affect business outcomes experimental evidence from vietnam we use a randomized control trial to evaluate the impact of a business training for female clients of a microfinance institution in northern vietnam and we consider the impact on i business knowledge ii practices and ii outcomes as well as iv firm entry and exit decisions in addition we vary the nature of the intervention by inviting husbands to participate in the trainings for a subsample of our respondents to gauge both short term and medium term effects we combine data from two separate postintervention surveys we find evidence of economically substantive impacts on knowledge practices and outcomes and on the extensive margin entry and exit we also document that it takes time for the downstream outcomes of the trainings to materialize although we find evidence of medium term effects no such evidence exists for the short term inviting husbands to participate in the trainings does not affect any of our knowledge or practice measures but we document weak evidence for different

beyond baseline and follow up the case for more t in experiments the vast majority of randomized experiments in economics rely on a single baseline and single follow up survey if multiple follow ups are conducted the reason is typically to examine the trajectory of impact effects so that in effect only one follow up round is being used to estimate each treatment effect of interest while such a design is suitable for study of highly autocorrelated and relatively precisely measured outcomes in the health and education domains this paper makes the case that it is unlikely to be optimal for measuring noisy and relatively less autocorrelated outcomes such as business profits household incomes and expenditures and episodic health outcomes taking multiple measurements of such outcomes at relatively short intervals allows the researcher to average out noise increasing power when the outcomes have low autocorrelation it can make sense to do no baseline at all moreover the author shows how for such outcomes more power can be achieved with multiple follow ups than allocating the same total sample size over a single follow up and baseline the analysis highlights the large gains in power from ancova rather than difference in differences when autocorrelations are low and a baseline is taken the paper discusses the issues involved in multiple measurements and makes recommendations for the design of experiments and related non experimental impact evaluations

commercial bank underwriting of credit enhanced bonds are there certification benefits to the issuer recent studies have expanded the commercial bank certification hypothesis to include banks acting in an underwriting capacity this paper further develops that research by focusing on the industrial revenue bond market in which banks have the unique opportunity to simultaneously act as both credit guarantor and underwriter when explicitly allowing for bank issued standby letters of credit guarantees we find significantly greater yield spreads for those bonds underwritten by commercial banks compared to bonds underwritten by investment banks overall no net benefit appears to accrue to the bond issuer when attempting to achieve joint or double certification benefits by employing commercial banks as both credit guarantor and underwriters except in the special case where the same bank acts as both guarantor and underwriter this limited certification effect is further validated when the credit quality of participating banks is accounted for this result is consistent with an economy of scope in monitoring and reusing information

male wage inequality and marital dissolution is there a link after almost a century long pattern of rising marital instability divorce rates leveled off in 1980 and have been declining ever since the timing of deceleration and decline in the rates of marital disruption interestingly coincides with a period of substantial growth in wage inequality this paper establishes a connection between the two phenomena and explores potential explanations for the underlying link using individual data on female marital histories in a duration analysis framework combined with regional and temporal variation in the pattern of male wage dispersion i show that inequality has a significant stabilizing effect on the marital relationship quantitatively increases in male wage dispersion can roughly explain up to 30 of the fall in the mean separation probability between 1979 and 1990 several plausible explanations for this relationship are assessed changes in spousal labor supplies female wage inequality income uncertainty social capital as well as a hypothesis of on the marriage search the results are most supportive of the search interpretation no strong quantitative support was found for the remaining mechanisms

the long term default performance of bank underwritten security issues abstract the glass steagall act of 1933 barred commercial banks and their affiliates from underwriting and dealing in securities activities amidst concerns that banks abused the trust of their depositors and clientele by systematically underwriting poor quality security issues this paper examines if these concerns were justified by studying the long term default performance of bank underwritten issues as compared to non bank underwritten issues the evidence shows that contrary to conventional wisdom bank underwritten issues defaulted less than non bank underwritten issues over a seven year period from the issue date and had a significantly lower mortality rate

returns to capital in microenterprises evidence from a field experiment small and informal firms account for a large share of employment in developing countries the rapid expansion of microfinance services is based on the belief that these firms have productive investment opportunities and can enjoy high returns to capital if given the opportunity however measuring the return to capital is complicated by unobserved factors such as entrepreneurial ability and demand shocks which are likely to be correlated with capital stock the authors use a randomized experiment to overcome this problem and to measure the return to capital for the average microenterprise in their sample regardless of whether they apply for credit they accomplish this by providing cash and equipment grants to small firms in sri lanka and measuring the increase in profits arising from this exogenous positive shock to capital stock after controlling for possible spillover effects the authors find the average real return to capital to be 5 7 percent a month substantially higher than the market interest rate they then examine the heterogeneity of treatment effects to explore whether missing credit markets or missing insurance markets are the most likely cause of the high returns returns are found to vary with entrepreneurial ability and with measures of other sources of cash within the household but not to vary with risk aversion or uncertainty

intensifying financial inclusion through the provision of financial literacy training a gendered perspective this study examines the impact of financial literacy training on financial inclusion and its intensity using data collected from a randomised control trial an additive index of financial inclusion

asymmetric information in securitization an empirical assessment abstract asymmetric information in securitization deals is analyzed based on a unique dataset comprising a million mortgages both securitized and not and using a methodology previously applied to insurance data that looks at the correlation between risk transfer and default probability the main finding is that for given observable characteristics securitized mortgages have a lower default probability than non securitized ones we show that this finding is consistent with banks caring about their reputation for not selling lemons

organization structure and credibility evidence from commercial bank securities activities before the glass steagall act we examine the two ways in which us commercial banks organized their investment banking operations before the 1933 glass steagall act forced the banks to leave the securities business as an internal securities department within the bank and as a separately incorporated affiliate with its own board of directors while departments underwrote seemingly higher quality firms and securities than did comparable affiliates the departments obtained lower prices for the issues they underwrote the higher risk premium associated with the internal department is consistent with investors discounting for the greater likelihood of conflicts of interest when lending and underwriting are within the same structure as a result commercial banks evolved toward choosing the separate affiliate structure our results suggest that internal structure is an effective commitment mechanism and absent other distortions market pressures would propel banks to adopt an internal structure that would address regulators concerns about conflicts of interest

credit ratings collateral and loan characteristics implications for yield this article studies how collateral affects bond yields using a large data set of public bonds we document that collateralized debt has higher yield than general debt after controlling for credit rating our model of agency problems between managers and claim holders explains this puzzling result by recognizing imperfections in the rating process we test the model s implications consistent with our model and in results new to the literature we find the yield differential between secured and unsecured debt after controlling for credit rating is larger for low credit rating nonmortgage assets longer maturity and with proxies for lower levels of monitoring

human and financial capital for microenterprise development evidence from a field and lab experiment microenterprises constitute an important source of employment and developing such enterprises is a key policy concern in most countries but what is the most efficient tool for microenterprise development we study this question in a developing country context tanzania where microenterprises are the source of employment for more than half of the labor force and we report from a field experiment that jointly investigated the importance of a human capital intervention business training and a financial capital intervention business grant using data from three survey rounds a lab experiment and administrative records of the microfinance institution we present evidence on business performance management practices happiness business knowledge and noncognitive abilities our study demonstrates strong effects of the combination of the two interventions on male entrepreneurs while the effects on female entrepreneurs are much more muted the results suggest that long term finance is an important constraint for microfinance entrepreneurs but that business training is essential to transform financial capital into productive investments our study also points to the need for more comprehensive measures to promote the businesses of female entrepreneurs data as supplemental material are available at http dx doi org 10 1287 mnsc 2014 1933 this paper was accepted by john list behavioral economics

the underwriting experience of commercial bank affiliates prior to the glass steagall act a reexamination of evidence for passage of the act abstract we examine a major rationale for the passage of the glass steagall act separating commercial and investment banking activities in the u s that these banks abused their superior knowledge by misrepresenting the quality of inferior security issues or passing off bad commercial loans through publicly offered security issues this issue is of current interest even in today s more relaxed environment in the u s and in the universal banking system in europe since there are still lingering doubts that such abuses will not recur in a systematic study of the performance of bond issues underwritten by different classes of underwriters prior to the passage of the glass steagall act we find bank affiliate issue default rates were lower ex ante yields were lower ex post prices were higher and the relative ability of ex ante yields to predict ex post performance no different than investment bank issues the results hold for all categories of bond issues domestic corporate foreign corporate and foreign governments we have also isolated the performance of the bonds underwrit national city company and chase securities corporation which were targets of the pecora hearing these two bank affiliates were found to issue bonds of lesser quality than the other bank affiliates but no worse than those of the investment banks

the effect of male wage inequality on female age at first marriage a model in which women search for husbands characterized by their wages predicts increasing within group male wage inequality raises the expected value of continued marital search and so lowers female marriage propensities using 1970 1980 and 1990 census data i test this hypothesis within geographically racially and educationally defined marriage markets the estimates suggest rising male wage inequality accounted for 7 to 18 of the decline in the propensity to marry between 1970 and 1990 for white women and more educated black women growing wage inequality appears to have had little effect on the marriage behavior of less educated black women

how have borrowers fared in banking mega mergers previous studies of event returns surrounding bank mergers show that banks gain value in megamergers and additional value when they absorb in market competitors a portion of these gains has been traced to the increased bargaining power of banks vis a vis regulators and other competitors we demonstrate that increased bargaining power of megabanks adversely affects loan customers of the acquired institution wealth losses are greater when loan customers are credit constrained the loan customer is smaller or the acquisition is an in market deal these findings reinforce complaints that the ongoing consolidation in banking has unfavorably affected the availability of credit for smaller firms and especially capitalconstrained firms

the efficiency effects of a single market for financial services in europe abstract this paper examines the potential efficiency effects of a single market for financial services in europe the topics covered include universal banking the merger and acquisition process itself cross border ownership and management of financial institutions and the effects of consolidation of financial institutions on the supply of relationship lending services to informationally opaque small businesses the research reviewed here suggests that the creation of a single market for the european financial services industry is not likely to bring about strong efficiency gains and that cross border efficiency barriers may prevent the single market from becoming a reality