irreversible choice of uncertain technologies with network externalities in this article i explore the problem of sequential and irreversible technology choice in the presence of network externalities when the technologies stochastically evolve over time early potential users are shown to adopt an irreversible technology too early compared to the social optimum the effect of increasing the uncertainty of the technologies on an early potential user s decision is analyzed i find that the sponsor of new emerging technology might choose a research strategy that is too safe i also study the consequences of allowing side payments between generations of consumers and demonstrate that an ex post optimal standardization policy can impair ex ante social welfare

securitization and the balance sheet channel of monetary transmission abstract this paper shows that the balance sheet channel of monetary transmission is stronger for us banks that securitize their assets this finding is different in spirit from the widely found negative relationship between financial development and the strength of the lending channel of monetary transmission focusing on the balance sheet channel and using bank level observations we find that securitizing banks are more sensitive to borrowers balance sheets and that monetary policy has a greater impact on this sensitivity for securitizing banks the optimality conditions from a simple partial equilibrium framework suggest that the positive effects of securitization on policy effectiveness could be due to the high sensitivity of security prices to policy rates

competitive equilibrium in the credit market under asymmetric information abstract we study a competitive credit market equilibrium in which all agents are risk neutral and lenders a priori unaware of borrowers default probabilities admissible credit contracts are characterized by the credit granting probability the loan quantity the loan interest rate and the collateral required the principal result is that in equilibrium lower risk borrowers pay higher interest rates than higher risk borrowers moreover the lower risk borrowers get more credit in equilibrium than they would with full information no credit is rationed and collateral requirements are higher for the lower risk borrowers

islamic banking and finance recent empirical literature and directions for future research this paper examines the recent empirical literature in islamic banking and finance highlights the main findings and provides a guide for future research early studies focus on the efficiency production technology and general performance features of islamic versus conventional banks whereas more recent work looks at profit and loss sharing pls behaviour competition risks as well as other dimensions such as small business lending and financial inclusion apart from key exceptions the empirical literature suggests no major differences between islamic and conventional banks in terms of their efficiency competition and risk features although small islamic banks are found to be less risky than their conventional counterparts there is some evidence that islamic finance aids inclusion and financial sector development results from the empirical finance literature dominated by studies that focus on the risk return features of mutual funds finds that islamic funds perform as well if not better than conventional funds there is little evidence that they perform worse than standard industry benchmarks some recent evidence however suggests that islamic bond sukuk issuance destroys value for shareholders

financial intermediation as a beliefs bridge between optimists and pessimists this paper proposes a new framework for understandingnancial intermediation in contrast to previous research we consider a setting in which intermediaries possess no inherent information processing or monitoring advantages instead in an economy with overly optimistic entrepreneurs who require funding from overly skeptical pessimistic investors we show that intermediaries can arise endogenously in such a setting only a rational intermediary will be su ciently optimistic tond it worthwhile to invest in a technology for screening entrepreneurs projects and yet be pessimistic enough to use this technology our framework produces implications consistent with heretofore unexplained stylized facts and a number of others which are as of yet untested

technological expectations and adoption of improved technology abstract attention is focused upon the adoption demand rather than the creation supply of new technology which improves from time to time based on the expected flow of technological progress over which the firm demander has no control it must decide either to adopt the current best available technology or to postpone adoption the distinguishing features of the model are that more than one technological innovation is anticipated and expectations about the likelihood of such innovations are revised as time passes since the last innovation our analysis shows that the firm will adopt the current best practice if its technological lag exceeds a certain threshold moreover as time passes without new technological advances it may become profitable to purchase a technology that has been available even though it was not profitable to do so in the past

intrahousehold allocation of free and purchased mosquito nets for some health goods intrahousehold allocation may be more important in determining outcomes than household level consumption an example is the use of mosquito nets to prevent malaria malaria kills over one million people annually 90 percent of them children under the age of five the use of insecticide treated mosquito nets itns is considered the most costeffective available strategy for control of the disease in 2000 44 of the 50 malaria affected countries in africa committed themselves to increasing the use of itns by vulnerable populations in particular children under five years of age and pregnant women adults in malarious regions have typically acquired some immunity to the disease through repeated exposure over the course of their lives the risk of severe malaria resulting in lifelong disability or death is highest for young children and pregnant women across transmission environments robert w snow et al 2003 on the other hand lost labor time often accounts for the largest portion of the private cost of the disease this implies a trade off between minimizing the income lost to malaria and minimizing the risk that a household member dies or is permanently disabled despite public health messages emphasizing the importance of using mosquito nets to protect young children from malaria nets are often used by adults when a household does not have enough nets to cover all members eline l korenromp et al 2003 frederick mugisha and jacqueline arinaitwe 2003 determining the welfare maximizing allocation of nets is intrahousehold allocation of free and purchased mosquito nets

competition and environmental policies in an electricity sector abstract we study the impact of competition and environmental policy feed in tariff vs the eu ets on investment co 2 emissions and welfare in an electricity sector we consider different market structures a planner who maximises social welfare vs duopoly and two types of consumers those whose behaviour depends on the weather vs those whose behaviour does not the demand specification is innovative and takes incompressible consumption into account given the costs and demand functions we find that competition can increase co 2 emissions as is highlighted by mansur 2007 in duopoly the eu ets seems to be the only efficient policy for reducing co 2 emissions but also to increase the share of production based on renewable energy sources the retained feed in tariff policy seems to be the most expensive policy in terms of social welfare even if this policy seems to increase social welfare feed in tariffs increase the cspe which is paid for by consumers in the form of higher electricity prices and only benefits new entrants it is also less effective in terms of emission reduction

a portfolio risk analysis on electricity supply planning abstract conventional electricity planning selects from a range of alternative technologies based on the least cost method without assessing cost related risks the current approach to determining energy generation portfolios creates a preference for fossil fuel consequently this preference results in increased exposure to recent fluctuations in fossil fuel prices particularly for countries heavily depend on imported energy this paper applies portfolio theory in conventional electricity planning with taiwan as a case study the model objective is to minimize the risk weighted present value of total generation cost both the present value of generating cost and risk variance of the generating cost are considered risk of generating cost is introduced for volatile fuel prices and uncertainty of technological change and capital cost reduction the impact of risk levels on the portfolio of power generation technologies is also examined to provide some valuable policy suggestions study results indicate that replacing fossil fuel with renewable energy helps reduce generating cost risk however due to limited renewable development potential in taiwan there is an upper bound of 15 on the maximum share of renewable energy in the generating portfolio in the meantime reevaluating the current nuclear energy policy for reduced exposure to fossil fuel price fluctuations is worthwhile

an exploration of competitive signalling equilibria with third party information production the case of debt insurance in markets in which sellers know more about product quality than buyers but cannot convey their superior information either by directly issuing costly signals of the spence type or by successfully funding the production of information i suggest another way in which the informational asymmetry problem can be resolved a third party can produce the necessary information at a cost and use it to price a service consumed by the sellers buyers can then observe a seller s choice of service consumption level and be well informed in equilibrium in this framework i construct a model in which a borrower s choice of insurance coverage signals its default probability to lenders and explore the properties of the resulting signalling equilibrium in a variety of cases subsequent to akerlof s provocative paper 1 the analysis of equilibria in markets with asymmetrically informed agents has been the subject of considerable enquiry akerlof s novel insight was the observation that such markets can fail in the sense that the demand at any price is zero this market failure can be prevented however if a priori imperfectly informed buyers of a given product can somehow revise their initial conditional estimates of product quality so that prices are consistent with quality in an equilibrium bhattacharya 2 3 ross 9 and spence 12 13 14 have suggested that one way of achieving this is to allow sellers of the product or service to issue costly signals of the quality offered for sale in a rational equilibrium prospective buyers could use these signals to discriminate accurately between products of differing quality campbell and kracaw 4 have recently suggested another possibility that sellers can make side payments to information producers to acquire the necessary information at a cost and convey it to the market this paper explores yet another distinct way of resolving the information asymmetry problem the market structure considered here involves three parties a group of sellers each aware of the quality of its own product a set of buyers who perhaps satisfy the rational expectations assumption that they are aware of the average quality of the products in the market but are unable to distinguish one seller from the other on the basis of product quality and third party information producers who expend resources to produce information about the quality of each product offered for sale these information producers recover the cost of information acquisition by using their knowledge to structure and price some fixed quality service that they provide to

thermopower generation investment in brazil economic conditions abstract one of the main questions in electricity market deregulation is the aptitude of private capital for investments in power generation this is especially important in brazil whose load has a strong growth trend 6 per year thermopower is an attractive alternative for expanding generation as it is complementary in many aspects to hydropower which supplies most brazil s power at a very low price most of the time but makes the system vulnerable to seasonal water variations this paper studies the competitiveness of thermopower generation in brazil under current regulations assesses under the real options theory approach the conditions for investments in thermopower generation and finally presents and discusses a hydropower generation schedule model

securitization a financing vehicle for all seasons securitization is considered to be one of the biggest financial innovations of the last century it is also regarded as both a catalyst and a solution to the 2008 financial crisis once a popular method of financing the mortgage and consumer credit markets aspects of the global securitization market are now struggling to revive in this paper i discuss the role that ethics played in securitization prior to the 2008 financial crisis and find that it is not an obvious story of moral failures but rather that it lies in more subtle elements of the financial system the ethics uncertainty role in the securitization story is one of flawed incentives and the shifting of responsibility for handling risk the role of securitization and the ethics of risk transfer have rarely been discussed explicitly in the literature the historical origins of securitization and lessons learned from previous flawed uses of the process are also provided i also detail the various global institutional reform proposals that have taken place moving forward it is crucial to understand the causes consequences and ethical implications of securitization in the financial crisis so as to help individuals and managers better assess risk align incentives and design appropriate policy responses

securitization and bank performance theory suggests that securitization provides financial institutions with an opportunity to lower the cost of funding improve credit risk management and increase profitability in practice however it might lead to adverse consequences through a number of indirect channels therefore the net impact of securitization on bank performance is ambiguous this study aims to evaluate whether banks improve their performance through the use of the securitization market by applying a propensity score matching approach in other words we build a counterfactual group of banks to assess what would have happened to the securitizing banks had they not securitized using us commercial banking data from 2001 to 2008 we first test these hypotheses using univariate analysis and find that securitizing banks are on average more profitable institutions with higher credit risk exposure and higher cost of funding however the propensity score matching analysis does not provide evidence of significant causal effects of securitization on the performance of banks therefore securitization does not seem to outperform alternative funding risk management and profitability improvement techniques used by banks that have ex ante similar characteristics to those securitizing our evidence raises important questions about the motives for banks increasing securitization activities and consequent implications for the banking system

information reliability and a theory of financial intermediation this paper is an analysis of when it will be beneficial for agents engaged in the production of information to form coalitions the model is cast in a financial market framework thus leading to an identification of conditions sufficient for the existence of financial intermediaries intermediation is shown to improve welfare if informational asymmetries are present and the information generated to rectify these asymmetries is potentially unreliable the usual appeal to transactions costs to explain intermediation is not needed

what impedes efficient adoption of products evidence from randomized sales offers for fuel efficient cookstoves in uganda consumers failure to adopt products with health and wellbeing benefits apparently far greater than their costs has consistentlychallenged the widespread use of health improving technologies a sales offer combining free trial time payments and the option of returning the product can overcome barriers such as liquidityconstraints and poor information about benefits and usability we tested this sales offer and alternatives in an experiment with a fuel efficient charcoal stove in urban uganda and a fuel efficient wood stove in rural uganda this offer dramatically increased uptake in urban kampala from 4 to 46 and in rural mbarara from 5 to 57

off balance sheet activity under adverse selection the european experience abstract in the crisis that started in 2007 banks off balance sheet activity has been blamed for flooding the market with low quality assets and contributing to spreading risk throughout the economic system nevertheless this view is hardly sustainable within the context of sophisticated markets this paper puts forward an alternative interpretation of the off balance sheet market the so called adverse selection hypothesis according to this hypothesis an adverse selection problem characterizes the relation between banks and their counterparties in off balance sheet deals empirically this implies that off balance sheet activity is expected to be negatively related to failure risk whereas it is expected to be positively related to the quality of the assets used for off balance sheet operations we test the adverse selection hypothesis for a sample of banks in the 27 member countries of the european union during the pre crisis period 1996 2006 and the crisis period 2007 2009 in addition we check for possible differences between banks in the first 15 members of the european union and those in the 12 new members

traditional and nontraditional banking an information theoretic approach abstract this paper uses a multiproduct approach to analyze the costs of a sample of large banks where bank outputs are measured to account for the different types of information produced by banks diseconomies of scope are found between traditional banking activities of originating and monitoring loans and nontraditional activities of loan selling and buying this suggests maintaining fire walls between commercial bank functions and investment bank functions after the glass steagall act is repealed will not sacrifice joint production economies it also suggests that arguments for repeal of the act based on the existence of such economies are ill founded

can higher prices stimulate product use evidence from a field experiment in zambia the controversy over how much to charge for health products in the developing world rests in part on whether higher prices can increase use either by targeting distribution to high use households a screening effect or by stimulating use psychologically through a sunk cost effect we develop a methodology for separating these two effects we implement the methodology in a field experiment in zambia using door to door marketing of a home water purification solution we find evidence of economically important screening effects by contrast we find no consistent evidence of sunk cost effects jel c93 d12 i11 m31 o12

from planning to strategy in the electricity industry abstract as more utility markets are deregulated and competition is introduced there is an increasing need to understand how the planning methods used under monopoly have to change to take the new deregulated environment into account although this might seem relatively trivial it has been a major problem for a large number of utilities which have continued using the same planning approaches that they used when they were monopolies in this paper we first describe the environment which under monopoly conditions gave rise to the use of mainly operational research methods for planning we then argue that deregulation has changed the fundamental assumptions making the planning methods used under monopoly less useful after deregulation finally we review a number of methods that utilities should consider using when they formulate strategy in deregulated markets

endogenising emission taxes a general equilibrium type optimisation model applied for turkey this paper presents a modelling attempt to endogenise the level and timing of environmental taxes within an optimisation framework first a base model of energy economy environmental interactions is extended to allow for exogenous tax analysis two types of environmental taxes one on the sulphur content of fuels and the other on the level of emissions are exogenously included in the model as alternative instruments to mitigate pollution next the base model is modified to endogenise pollution abatement this has been achieved by incorporating a preference rate depending on an index of emissions into the utility function finally the emission index and emission tax are taken as substitutes and modelled within a ces form to endogenise the emission tax results for all cases obtained with turkish data are discussed it is found that a tax on so2 emissions is more effective in reducing so2 emissions than a tax applied on the sulphur content of fuels it is also found that a gradually increasing tax is more effective in reducing emissions than a constant tax

making markets for structured mortgage derivatives abstract this paper distinguishes between securitization in which simple pass through instruments are created and structuring in which mortgages derivative claims are created the point is to explain how structuring a transaction brings value to a deal s underwriter briefly an underwriter must defeat arbitrage between pass throughs and derivatives the potential for market segmentation and price discrimination by the underwriter is used to analyze the structuring process in the course of the analysis the legal rules for trusts the algebraic rules for structuring and the limits on permissible price discrimination are discussed results for an actual transaction illustrate the important features of the analysis

banks and loan sales marketing nonmarketable assets theories of financial intermediation predict that bank loans should not be marketable because of moral hazard problems banks will not conduct credit risk analysis or monitor borrowers if they are not at risk for failing to perform these services throughout most of history bank loans have not in fact been marketable yet by the end of the 1980 s the amount of commercial and industrial loan sales outstanding had grown to over 250 billion from trivial amounts at the beginning of the decade to explain the opening of this loan sales market we present a model of incentive compatible loan sales that allows for implicit contractual features between loan sellers and loan buyers we then test for the presence of these features using a sample of over 800 recent loan sales

eliciting and utilizing willingness to pay evidence from field trials in northern ghana we utilize the becker degroot marschak 1964 mechanism to estimate the willingness to pay for clean drinking water technology in northern ghana the bdm mechanism has attractive properties for empirical research allowing us to directly estimate demand compute heterogeneous treatment effects and study the screening and causal effects of prices with minor modifications to a standard field experiment setting we demonstrate the implementation of bdm along these three dimensions compare it to the standard take it or leave it method for eliciting willingness to pay and discuss practical issues for implementing the mechanism in true field settings jel classifications c93 d12 d82 l11 l31

investment planning in electricity production under co2 price uncertainty the electricity markets have undergone significant changes during the last years on the one hand the market deregulation has increased significantly the uncertainty on future electricity prices on the other hand the kyoto protocol and the establishment of emission restrictions as well as the development of emission trading systems has added another expense stream for conventional fuel electricity producers and a potential income stream for renewable electricity producers the emission allowance prices are another source of uncertainty for electricity producers the scope of this work is to investigate the effect that various scenarios for emission allowance price evolution may have on the orders for new electricity generation technologies and therefore on the future electricity generation mix of greece the renewable energy generation targets are taken into consideration as a constraint of the system and the learning rates of the various technologies are included in the calculations the national electricity generation system is modelled for long term analysis and an optimisation method is applied in order to come up with the optimal generating mix that minimises electricity generation cost while satisfying the national emissions reduction targets and incorporating the uncertainty of emission allowance prices in addition an investigation is made to identify if a point should be expected when renewable energy will be more profitable than conventional fuel electricity generation the work is interesting for investment planning in the electricity market as it may provide directions on which technologies are most probable to dominate the market in the future and therefore are of interest to be included in the future power portfolios of related investors

moral hazard and information sharing a model of financial information gathering agencies we propose a theory of information gathering agencies in a world of informational asymmetries and moral hazard in a setting in which true firm values are certified by screening agents whose payoffs depend on noisy ex post monitors of information quality the formation of information gathering agencies groups of screening agents is justified on two grounds first it enables screening agents to diversify their risky payoffs second it allows information sharing the first effect itself is insufficient despite the risk aversion of screening agents and the stochastic independence of the monitors used to compensate them this paper develops a model that explains the formation of financial institutions which acquire and process information for the purpose of certifying asset qualities but do not get involved in funding the model makes two basic assumptions the first is that there is an informational asymmetry in the capital market involving insiders possessing more accurate information about the true economic values of their firms than outsiders and the second is that those engaged in the production of information to rectify this asymmetry can gain from sharing their information examples of the information gathering agencies iga s we study are creditrating agencies financial newsletters standard and poor s value line investment counselors credit bureaus etc iga s are distinct from funding financial intermediaries ffi s like banks and credit unions that in addition to acquiring and processing information also issue claims against themselves fund their customers needs and transform asset characteristics from a modeling standpoint a key distinction between iga s and ffi s is that in the case of the latter outsiders depositors for instance do not necessarily have to assess the quality of the intermediary s information since the intermediary can be made accountable for this quality through the positions it takes in the screened assets thus models that explain ffi s focus on how the contracts offered by the intermediary ensure information reliability without reliance on explicit monitoring on the other hand because of the absence of loan and deposit type contracts to dissipate informational problems a model explaining iga s must rely on monitoring related mechanisms

the use of loan sales and standby letters of credit by commercial banks abstract this paper examines the incentives banks have to engage in off balance sheet activities such as commercial loan sales and the issuance of standby letters of credit slcs i show that loan sales and loans backed by slcs have payoff characteristics similar to secured debt like secured debt off balance sheet activities permit banks to sell a portion of the cash flows associated with new investment oppurtunities this ability permits banks to invest in loans with positive net present values that they would pass up if restricted to deposit financing an examination of the risk premium on large certificates of deposit provides evidence consistent with the model

the illusion of sustainability this brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study entitled the illusion of sustainability conducted during the time period 1998 to 2001 in kenya the study observed that deworming is a public good since much of its social benefit comes through reduced disease transmission people were less likely to take deworming if their direct first order or indirect second order social contacts were exposed to deworming the introduction of a small fee for deworming drugs led to an 80 percent reduction in treatment rates take up was not sensitive to the exact price level suggesting that it is particularly counter productive to charge small positive prices for the treatment of infectious diseases an intensive school health education had no impact on worm prevention funding for the study derived from world bank nih fogarty international center berkeley center for health research

a real options evaluation model for the diffusion prospects of new renewable power generation technologies this study presents a policy planning model that integrates learning curve information on renewable power generation technologies into a dynamic programming formulation featuring real options analysis the model recursively evaluates a set of investment alternatives on a year by year basis thereby taking into account that the flexibility to delay an irreversible investment expenditure can profoundly affect the diffusion prospects of renewable power generation technologies price uncertainty is introduced through stochastic processes for the average wholesale price of electricity and for input fuel prices demand for electricity is assumed to be increasingly price sensitive as the electricity market deregulation proceeds reflecting new options of consumers to react to electricity price changes such as time of use pricing unbundled electricity services and choice of supplier the empirical analysis is based on data for the turkish electricity supply industry apart from general implications for policy making it provides some interesting insights about the impact of uncertainty and technical change on the diffusion of various emerging renewable energy technologies

stoves or sugar willingness to adopt improved cookstoves in malawi malawi has set a target of adoption of two million improved cookstoves ics by 2020 meeting this objective requires knowledge about determinants of adoption particularly in rural areas where the cost of traditional cooking technologies and fuels are non monetary and where people have limited capacity to purchase an ics we conducted a discrete choice experiment with 383 households in rural malawi asking them if they would chose a locally made ics or a package of sugar and salt of roughly equal value six months later we assessed adoption and stove use patterns sixty six percent of households chose the ics we find that having a larger share of crop residues in household fuel supply awareness of the environmental impacts of woodfuel reliance time the primary cook devotes to collecting fuelwood and peer effects at the village level increase the odds of choosing the ics having a large labor supply for fuelwood collection and experience with a non traditional cooking technology decreased the odds of choosing the ics in a rapid assessment six months after stoves were distributed we found 80 of households were still using the ics but not exclusively our findings suggest considerable potential for wide scale adoption of ics in malawi

the impact of delivery lags on irreversible investment under uncertainty abstract we consider the valuation and rational exercise of irreversible investment opportunities in the presence of revenue uncertainty and delivery lags in order to capture supply side market imperfections in the markets for investment goods we assume that the lag depends on the revenue process faced by the investor we show that such imperfections have a pronounced decelerating impact on rational investment demand as they may increase the value of waiting in excess of the exercise payoff even for projects which otherwise would be perceived as highly remunerative we also consider the comparative static properties of the optimal investment policy and its value and demonstrate that typically increased uncertainty decreases the investment incentives by increasing the value of waiting

the emergence and regulation of contingent commitment banking abstract in but a relatively few years banking has changed considerably now it is very much a business of making contingent promises or commitments and even just a decade ago it was not recognizing change is apparently easier though than accounting for it or than not worrying about it in this paper an attempt is made to account for the change from traditional to contingent commitment banking an attempt which must however be regarded as less than brilliantly successful and responding to the concern that has been expressed by among others federal reserve officials it is argued that even if banking keeps on changing until the last vestige of the traditional has disappeared the federal reserve need not in the end be less effective as the u s monetary authority than it is at present there is also a concern shared by some federal reserve officials that if change persists then unless bank regulatory policy is altered appropriately financial stability will be increasingly threatened that could be but as is argued in the paper it is far from obvious that more capital and or a risk adjusted capital requirement will make bank failures rarer than they otherwise would be

loan sales as a response to market based capital constraints models of bank loan sales often appeal to regulatory constraints to motivate this off balance sheet activity here we present a market based model of bank asset sales in which information asymmetries create the incentive for unregulated banks to originate and sell loans to other banks rather than fund them with deposit liabilities banks have a comparative advantage in locating and screening projects within their locality however because of private information banks can fund projects in their portfolio only to the extent that their capital can adequately buffer potential losses on these investments a loan sales market allows a banker having adequate capital to acquire profitable projects originated by a banker whose own capital is insufficient to support the additional risk

incorporating life cycle external cost in optimization of the electricity generation mix the present work aims to examine the strategic decision of future electricity generation mix considering together with all other factors the effect of the external cost associated with the available power generation technology options not only during their operation but also during their whole life cycle the analysis has been performed by integrating the life cycle assessment concept into a linear programming model for the yearly decisions on which option should be used to minimize the electricity generation cost the model has been applied for the case of greece for the years 2012 2050 and has led to several interesting results firstly most of the new generating capacity should be renewable mostly biomass and wind while natural gas is usually the only conventional fuel technology chosen if externalities are considered wind energy increases its share and hydro power replaces significant amounts of biomass generated energy furthermore a sensitivity analysis has been performed one of the most important findings is that natural gas increases its contribution when externalities are increased summing up external cost has been found to be a significant percentage of the total electricity generation cost for some energy sources therefore significantly changing the ranking order of cost competitiveness for the energy sources examined

modeling technology adoption as an irreversible investment under uncertainty the case of the turkish electricity supply industry this paper studies energy conversion technology adoption in the electricity supply sector from the perspective of irreversible investments under uncertainty and with a particular interest in environmental sustainability we develop a dynamic technology adoption model that is firmly rooted in economic theory and that takes important determinants of optimal investment in available technologies e g life cycle capital and operation cost explicitly into account uncertainty is introduced for the demand for peak load capacity unit generation costs and for the average electricity price we test the model empirically by applying it to data for the turkish power supply industry the model guided optimal investment schedule based on net present value considerations exhibits significant deviations from the actual investment outcome we find that the increased adoption of natural gas fired power generation technologies in turkey in recent years while contributing to environmental sustainability has had doubtful merits from an investor s perspective

micro loans insecticide treated bednets and malaria evidence from a randomized controlled trial in orissa india we describe findings from the first large scale cluster randomized controlled trial in a developing country that evaluates the uptake of a health protecting technology insecticide treated bednets itns through micro consumer loans as compared to free distribution and control conditions despite a relatively high price 52 percent of sample households purchased itns highlighting the role of liquidity constraints in explaining earlier low adoption rates we find mixed evidence of improvements in malaria indices we interpret the results and their implications within the debate about cost sharing sustainability and liquidity constraints in public health initiatives in developing countries

collateral and rationing sorting equilibria in monopolistic and competitive credit markets the authors examine how market structure affects credit allocation under universal risk neutrality and asymmetric information about borrowers they consider both monopolistic and perf ectly competitive banks and examine the role of collateral in each ca se when a bank is a monopolist on the loan side they find collatera l is never used and asymmetric information results in reduced bank le nding under perfect competition collateral has a useful sorting rol e moreover rationing is possible even with collateral availability and perfectly elastic deposit supply in this setting the authors sh ow co signers are valuable social welfare properties of the monopoly and competitive equilibria are also compared copyright 1987 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

loan sales and the cost of bank capital this paper considers a model where banks may improve the returns on loans by monitoring borrowers bank regulation together with competitive deposit and equity financing can give banks an incentive to sell loans but the extent of their loan selling is limited by a moral hazard problem a solution is given for the optimal design of the bank loan buyer contract that alleviates this moral hazard problem an explanation is also given as to why some banks might buy loans and why loan sales volume has recently increased banks practice of making loans and then selling them to other institutions and individuals has grown in popularity an important example in the development of loan selling has been the increase in banks mortgage loans that are insured and pooled under the authority of the government national mortgage association gnma and then sold to secondary market investors recently however there has been a dramatic rise in the volume of other types of loans being sold especially by money center banks portions of commercial loans originated by these larger banks are being sold to smaller banks foreign banks and other financial and nonfinancial institutions in addition banks car loans and credit card receivables have also been pooled and sold to institutions and individuals selling loans that were once considered nonmarketable assets a process that has been termed asset securitization may be signalling the start of a fundamental change in the commercial banking business the leading banks in loan selling operations now view themselves more as originators and distributors of loans rather than as institutions holding loans as assets the potentially large impact of loan sales on the future of commercial banking naturally evokes the question of what incentives exist for banks to sell loans in this paper we show that loan sales allow some banks to finance loans less expensively than by traditional deposit or equity issue because bank funds received via loan sales can avoid costs associated with required reserves and

price subsidies diagnostic tests and targeting of malaria treatment evidence from a randomized controlled trial author s dupas pascaline cohen jessica schaner simone abstract both under and over treatment of communicable diseases are public bads but efforts to decrease one run the risk of increasing the other using rich experimental data on household treatment seeking behavior in kenya we study the implications of this tradeoff for subsidizing life saving antimalarials sold over the counter at retail drug outlets we show that a very high subsidy such as the one under consideration by the international community dramatically increases access but nearly half of subsidized pills go to patients without malaria we study two ways to better target subsidized drugs reducing the subsidy level and introducing rapid malaria tests over the counter

microcredit and willingness to pay for environmental quality evidence from a randomized controlled trial of finance for sanitation in rural cambodia low willingness to pay wtp for environmental quality in developing countries is a key research question in environmental economics one explanation is that missing credit markets may suppress wtp for environmental improvements that require large up front investments we test the impact of microloans on wtp for hygienic latrines via a randomized controlled trial in 30 villages in rural cambodia we find that microcredit dramatically raises wtp for improved latrines with 60 of households in the financing arm willing to purchase at an unsubsidized price relative to 25 in the non financing arm effects on latrine installation are positive but muted by several factors including a negative peer effect randomly induced purchases by neighbors reduce a household s probability of installing its own latrine on methodological grounds this paper shows that a decision focused evaluation can be integrated into academic analysis to provide insight into questions of general interest

costly information production equilibria in the bank credit market with applications to credit rationing in this paper we explore the nature of equilibria in an asymmetrically informed bank credit market in which credit applicants know their own intrinsic default risks but potential lenders can discover these default risks only by expending resources to produce information the resolution of informational asymmetries in the capital market is in the contemporary view considered a very important function served by financial intermediaries like commercial banks and in the opinion of some even the primary justification for their existence 17 we therefore focus on how the presence of asymmetric information in particular the response of expected profit maximizing banks to it affects the equilibrium prices and quantities of credit offered in the banking system

information reusability competition and bank asset quality this paper explains the recent decline in bank asset quality using the notion of information reusability banks are viewed as information processors they exist because of their advantage in extracting the surplus associated with the reusability of borrower specific information it is shown that a bank s incentive to screen loan applicants and hence maintain the quality of its assets depends on the surplus this screening can produce which in turn depends on information reusability two recent changes in banks operating environment are increased competitition and greater temporal volatility in borrower credit risks the former has directly reduced banks informational surplus while the latter has impaired information reusability hence screening expenditures have been reduced and the diminution of screening has lowered the quality of bank assets it is also shown that an increase in deposit insurance premia has an effect similar to that of narrowing interest spreads and therefore will result in reduced asset screening and impaired asset quality

time dependent opportunities in energy business a comparative study of locally available renewable and conventional fuels this work investigates and compares energy related private business strategies potentially interesting for investors willing to exploit either local biomass sources or strategic conventional fuels two distinct fuels and related power production technologies are compared as a case study in terms of economic efficiency the biomass of cotton stalks and the natural gas the carbon capture and storage option are also investigated for power plants based on both fuel types the model used in this study investigates important economic aspects using a real options method instead of traditional discounted cash flow techniques as it might handle in a more effective way the problems arising from the stochastic nature of significant cash flow contributors evolution like electricity fuel and co2 allowance prices the capital costs have also a functional relationship with time thus providing an additional reason for implementing real options as well as the learning curves technique the methodology as well as the results presented in this work may lead to interesting conclusions and affect potential private investment strategies and future decision making this study indicates that both technologies lead to positive investment yields with the natural gas being more profitable for the case study examined while the carbon capture and storage does not seem to be cost efficient with the current co2 allowance prices furthermore low interest rates might encourage potential investors to wait before actualising their business plans while higher interest rates favor immediate investment decisions

preferences for improved cook stoves evidence from rural villages in north india abstract because emissions from solid fuel burning in traditional stoves impact global climate change the regional environment and household health there is today real interest in improved cook stoves ics nonetheless surprisingly little is known about what households like about these energy products we report on preferences for biomass burning ics attributes in a large sample of 2120 rural households in north india a global hotspot for biomass fuel use and the damages that such use entails households have a strong baseline reliance and preference for traditional stoves a preference that outweighs the 10 and 5 willingness to pay wtp for realistic 33 reductions in smoke emissions and fuel needs on average respectively preferences for stove attributes are also highly varied and correlated with a number of household characteristics e g expenditures gender of household head patience and risk preferences these results suggest that households exhibit cautious interest in some aspects of ics but that widespread adoption is unlikely because many households appear to prefer traditional stoves over ics with similar characteristics the policy community must therefore support a reinvigorated supply chain with complementary infrastructure investments foster experimentation with products encourage continued applied research and knowledge generation and provide appropriate incentives to consumers if ics distribution is to be scaled up

free distribution or cost sharing evidence from a randomized malaria prevention experiment author s cohen jessica dupas pascaline abstract it is often argued that cost sharing charging a subsidized positive price for a health product is necessary to avoid wasting resources on those who will not use or do not need the product we explore this argument through a field experiment in kenya in which we randomized the price at which prenatal clinics could sell long lasting anti malarial insecticide treated nets itns to pregnant women we find no evidence that costsharing reduces wastage on those that will not use the product women who received free itns are not less likely to use them than those who paid subsidized positive prices we also find no evidence that costsharing induces selection of women who need the net more those who pay higher prices appear no sicker than the average prenatal client in the area in terms of measured anemia an important indicator of malaria cost sharing does however considerably dampen demand we find that uptake drops by 75 percent when the price of itns increases from zero to 0 75 i e from 100 to 87 5 percent subsidy the price at which itns are currently sold to pregnant women in kenya we combine our estimates in a cost effectiveness analysis of itn prices on child mortality that incorporates both private and social returns to itn usage overall our results suggest that free distribution of itns could save many more lives than cost sharing programs have achieved so far and given the large positive externality associated with widespread usage of itns it would likely do so at a lesser cost per life saved

neighbors and extension agents in ethiopia who matters more for technology adoption improving agricultural productivity is seen as vital to economic growth in poor countries particularly in sub saharan africa where productivity growth has lagged behind that of other continents the focus has therefore been on new technologies particularly the adoption and diffusion of improved seed varieties and the increased use of fertiliser supported by investments in effective extension services it is important to understand how these new technologies spread and the effectiveness of extension services in this process

short run subsidies and long run adoption of new health products evidence from a field experiment short run subsidies for health products are common in poor countries how do they affect long run adoption a common fear among development practitioners is that one off subsidies may negatively affect long run adoption through reference dependence people might anchor around the subsidized price and be unwilling to pay more for the product later but for experience goods one off subsidies could also boost long run adoption through learning this paper uses data from a two stage randomized pricing experiment in kenya to estimate the relative importance of these effects for a new improved antimalarial bed net reduced form estimates show that a one time subsidy has a positive impact on willingness to pay a year later inherit to separately identify the learning and anchoring effects we estimate a parsimonious experience good model estimation results show a large positive learning effect but no anchoring we black then discuss the types of products and the contexts inherit for which these results may apply

is fairly priced deposit insurance possible we analyze risk sensitive incentive compatible deposit insurance in the presence of private information and moral hazard without deposit linked subsidies it is impossible to implement risk sensitive incentive compatible deposit insurance pricing in a competitive deregulated environment except when the deposit insurer is the least risk averse agent in the economy we establish this formally in the context of an insurance scheme in which privately informed depository institutions are offered deposit insurance premia contingent on reported capital the result holds for alternative sorting instruments as well this suggests a contradiction between deregulation and fairly priced risk sensitive deposit insurance this paper exposes a conflict between a deregulated competitive financial services industry on the one hand and fairly priced risk sensitive deposit insurance on the other we show that if depository institutions dis are perfectly competitive i e each makes zero profits on average then it is impossible to implement incentive compatible risk sensitive deposit insurance pricing recent distress among dis has fueled debate about reform of the existing deposit insurance system many believe that the prevailing risk insensitive premium structure encourages dis to choose excessively risky assets and that it should be replaced by deposit insurance premia linked to the dis choices of risk 2 risk sensitive deposit insurance pricing however imposes greater informational demands on the deposit insurer and runs afoul of both

bank funding modes securitization versus deposits abstract we examine a bank s choice of whether to fund the loans it originates by emitting deposits or to sell the loans to investors with common knowledge of loan quality and laissez faire banking we find that the choice is irrelevant with asymmetric information but without government intervention we find that better quality assets will be sold securitized and poorer quality assets will be funded with deposits public regulation can influence the bank s choice subsidies can cause a bank to favor deposit funding but mutual funds and third party insurers may mitigate the effects of governmental subsidies

short term safety or long term failure empirical evidence of the impact of securitization on bank risk based on a sample of u s commercial banks from 2002 to 2012 this paper shows that bank loan securitization has a significant and positive impact on both z scores and the likelihood of bank failure indicating a short term risk reduction and a long term risk increase effect we also find disparate impacts between mortgage and non mortgage securitization loan sale activities are found to have a similar impact to securitization

the impact of the household decision environment on fuel choice behavior abstract consumer preferences for fuels and alternative cookstove technologies in kenya are examined focusing on household internal and external determinants driving choice behavior in a choice experiment the potential for a transition towards cleaner and more efficient fuels and technologies is assessed by zooming in on three fuel stove combinations we find substantial demand and positive willingness to pay for the fuel stove combinations in three locations representing different decision environments demand is significantly higher in the peri urban and the resource abundant rural location than in the resource scarce rural location the presence of better developed consumer markets for fuels in these locations functions as an important driver for cookstove adoption although charcoal and ethanol stoves are preferred over improved firewood stoves continued firewood usage is expected energy switching behavior cannot be substantiated instead energy stacking is more likely where charcoal and ethanol add to and extend a household s energy portfolio

one off subsidies and long run adoption experimental evidence on improved cooking stoves in senegal free technology distribution can be an effective development policy instrument if market driven adoption is socially inefficient and hampered by affordability constraints yet policy makers often oppose free distribution arguing that reference dependence lowers the willingness to pay wtp and thus market potentials in the long run for improved cookstoves this paper studies the wtp six years after a randomized one time free distribution in 2009 we demonstrate that the cookstoves were intensely used by the treatment group households in the years after randomization until they reached their designated lifetime using a real purchase offer we find that both treatment and control households reveal a remarkably high wtp in 2015 the estimated confidence interval suggests that we can exclude a substantial negative effect on the treatment group the policy implication is that one time free distribution does not necessarily undermine future market establishment and thus can be an effective policy instrument if rapid dissemination is the objective

investments of uncertain cost abstract this paper examines irreversible investment decisions when projects take time to complete and are subject to two types of cost uncertainty the first is technical uncertainty i e uncertainty over the physical difficulty of completing a project which is only resolved as the investment proceeds the second is input cost uncertainty i e uncertainty over the prices of construction inputs or over government regulations affecting construction costs which is external to the firm these two types of uncertainty have very different effects on the investment decision a simple investment rule is derived that maximizes firm value and is used to analyze the decision to start or continue building a nuclear power plant during the 1980s

the effect of marketing messages and payment over time on willingness to pay for fuel efficient cookstoves abstract smoke from inefficient biomass cookstoves contributes to global climate change and kills approximately four million people per year cooking technologies such as manufactured fuel efficient cookstoves that mitigate the negative effects of traditional cookstoves exist but adoption rates are low the international development community debates whether this low adoption of fuel efficient cookstoves is due to a lack of adequate product information or due to household financial constraints we ran vickery second price auctions in rural uganda to elicit willingness to pay for fuel efficient cookstoves comparing the effect of informational marketing messages and time payments on willingness to pay a randomized trial tested the following marketing messages this stove can improve health this stove can save time and money and both messages combined none of the messages consistently increased willingness to pay in a second experiment we compared willingness to pay for two different contracts one with payment due within a week and one with equal installment payments over 4 weeks consistent with household financial constraints time payments raised willingness to pay by 40

preferences and the home bias in trade abstract why is there less observed trade than is predicted by neoclassical trade models a home bias in consumption due to preferences can partially explain this using data from a randomly assigned auction mechanism and survey conducted in madagascar respondents willingness to pay for rice of varying quality and origin is investigated by imposing a novel structure on traditional valuation collection methods one finds that consumers will pay approximately 8 more for home grown rice the key result is that consumers place greater value on an item produced in their own country without any tangible reason to do so other than the product s origin this preference based explanation is one piece of the mosaic of factors that cause disproportionate consumption of domestically produced goods this paper provides concrete evidence in favor of structuring trade models to allow for an explicit home bias in preferences

the solvency of financial institutions in spain lessons from securitization on analysing a sample of spanish banks we find that securitization has a slightly negative impact on the soundness of the issuing entity an unbalanced dynamic panel model was estimated using the forward orthogonal deviations gmm method and used to analyse 537 traditional securitizations issued by 61 banks between 1998 and 2012 the analysis revealed that the entities soundness became weaker immediately prior to the crisis but this effect became insignificant after 2007 securitization has facilitated a process of regulatory capital arbitrage leading to lower capital requirements while at the same time giving rise to a slight worsening of the quality of the originators portfolios it was found that profitability liquidity and inflation positively affect solvency while changes in short term interest rates affect it negatively

the use of real options approach in energy sector investments abstract energy shortage global warming and climate change led to an increase in the use of alternative sources of energy with renewable energy sources res playing a fundamental role in this new energetic paradigm however the investment costs often constitute a major barrier to their spread use moreover the overall benefits of renewable energy technologies are often not well understood and consequently they are often evaluated to be not as cost effective as traditional technologies from the moment that the energy sector started a deregulation process with a high level of competitiveness and associated increased market uncertainty traditional project evaluation techniques alone became insufficient to properly deal with these additional risk and uncertainty factors the diffusion of the renewable energy technologies is also affected by this feature the way investors evaluate their investments call now for the use of more sophisticated evaluation techniques real options approach can deal with these issues and as so began to be considered and applied for the energy sector decision aid this approach it is now extensively widespread in evaluating investment projects in the energy sector a large set of applications in almost all fields of energy decision making from electricity generation technologies appraisal to policy evaluation is available in the literature however the use of this technique in the field of res is still limited and worth to be analysed this paper addresses this issue a review of the current state of the art in the application of real options approach to investments in non renewable energy sources and res is presented giving perspectives for further research in this field

time to build option value and investment decisions abstract investment decisions and outlays are often made sequentially for example the rate at which construction proceeds is usually flexible and can be adjusted with the arrival of new information traditional discounted cash flow methods which treat the pattern of investment as fixed ignore this flexibility and understate the value of the project this paper uses contingent claims analysis to derive optimal decision rules and to value such investments we determine the effects of time to build opportunity cost and uncertainty on the investment decision for reasonable parameter values we show how a simple npv rule can lead to gross errors

capital regulation and insured banks choice of individual loan default risks abstract how bankers choose the riskiness of their individual assets is an important question it is well known that fixed premium deposit insurance leads a bank to prefer a high variance asset portfolio but its effect on individual asset choice has not been carefully evaluated this paper demonstrates how bank examination procedures and capital adequacy standards can make the value of a bank s deposit insurance contract concave in individual asset risks insured bankers may therefore have a rational preference ceteris paribus for relatively safe individual loans even while they prefer risky portfolio returns the model s implications for loan securitization and the federal regulators new risk based capital standards are discussed

using an economic experiment to estimate willingness to pay for a new maternal nutrient supplement in ghana scaling up access to supplements designed to prevent undernutrition such as new small quantity lipid based nutrient supplements sq lns may require distribution via both public channels and retail markets the viability of sq lns retail markets will hinge on household level demand we use an economic experiment to characterize initial willingness to pay wtp for a maternal sq lns product in ghana wtp is positive for most participants though below the estimated cost of production for many wtp varies depending on income assets and parity status these findings have implications for the design of public health policy and hybrid public private delivery mechanisms

capacity expansion of power generation systems with uncertainty in the prices of primary energy resources in capacity expansion studies of power generation systems the uncertainty in the prices of the primary energy resources is a major concern the approach presented in this paper accounts for this uncertainty by mapping the probability distribution of the installed capacity for any given distribution of the fuel prices given the probability density function and the cumulative distribution of the installed capacity a variety of performance measures is derived including the expected value the mode and the variance of the installed capacity and the expected total costs results are obtained analytically for a 2 unit system using a breakeven point analysis approach to find the optimal mix for any given set of fuel prices under the assumption of normally distributed primary energy prices

dynamics of demand for index insurance evidence from a long run field experiment this paper estimates how experimentally manipulated experiences with a novel financial product rainfall index insurance affect subsequent insurance demand using a seven year panel we develop three main findings first recent experience matters for demand consistent with overinference from small samples second spillovers also matter in the sense that the recent payout experience of village co residents affects insurance demand about as much as one s own recent payout experience third the spillover effect decays as time passes while the effect of one s own experience does not we discuss implications of this analysis for commercial sustainability of this complicated but promising risk management technology

who invests in renewable electricity production empirical evidence and suggestions for further research transforming energy systems to fulfill the needs of a low carbon economy requires large investments in renewable electricity production res e recent literature underlines the need to take a closer look at the composition of the res e investor group in order to understand the motives and investment processes of different types of investors however existing energy policies generally consider res e investments made on a regional or national level and target investors who evaluate their res e investments according to least cost high profit criteria we present empirical evidence to show that res e investments are made by a heterogeneous group of investors that a variety of investors exist and that their formation varies among the different types of renewable sources this has direct implications for our understanding of the investment process in res e and for the study of motives and driving forces of res e investors we introduce a multi dimensional framework for analyzing differences between categories of investors which not only considers to the standard economic dimension which is predominant in the contemporary energy literature but also considers the entrepreneurship innovation adoption and institutional dimensions the framework emphasizes the influence of four main investor related factors on the investment process which should be studied in future research motives background resources and personal characteristics

impact of climate policy uncertainty on the adoption of electricity generating technologies this paper presents a real options model where multiple options are evaluated simultaneously so that the effect of the individual options on each other is accounted for we apply this model to the electricity sector where we analyze three typical technologies based on fossil fuel fossil fuel with carbon capture and renewable energy respectively in this way we can analyze the transition from co2 intensive to co2 neutral electricity production in the face of rising and uncertain co2 prices in addition such a modelling approach enables us to estimate precisely the expected value of perfect information i e the willingness of investors and producers to pay for information about the correct co2 price path as can be expected the expected value of information rises with increasing co2 price uncertainty in addition the larger the price uncertainty the larger are the cumulative co2 emissions over the coming century the reason for this is that the transition to less co2 intensive technologies is increasingly postponed with rising co2 price uncertainty by testing different price processes geometric brownian motion versus jump processes with different jump frequencies we can also make useful recommendations concerning the importance of policy predictability we find that it is better to have climate change policies that are stable over a certain length of time and change abruptly than less abrupt but more frequently changing policies less frequent fluctuations reduce the expected value of information and result in smaller cumulative co2 emissions