what drives deregulation economics and politics of the relaxation of bank branching restrictions this paper investigates private interest public interest and political institutional theories of regulatory change to analyze state level deregulation of bank branching restrictions using a hazard model we find that interest group factors related to the relative strength of potential winners large banks and small bank dependent firms and losers small banks and the rival insurance firms can explain the timing of branching deregulation across states during the last quarter century the same factors also explain congressional voting on interstate branching deregulation while we find some support for each theory the private interest approach provides the most compelling overall explanation of our results

deposit guarantee evaluation and incentives analysis in a mutual guarantee system abstract this paper analyzes how the deposit guarantee value affects the risk incentives in a mutual guarantee system we liken the guarantee s value to that of a european style contingent claims portfolio the main feature emerging from our model is that a mutual guarantee system would give banks an adverse incentive to increase riskiness to mitigate this incentive we introduce a regulatory provision modelled using a path dependent contingent claim by comparing the mutual guarantee system with a non mutual one we show that the former is less expensive but implies higher adverse incentives for the banks especially for undercapitalized institutions

the glass of milk subsidy program and malnutrition in peru this study of the vaso de leche glass of milk feeding program in peru looks for evidence that this in kind transfer program aimed at young children furthers nutritional objectives the study links public expenditure data with household survey data to substantiate the targeting and to model the determinants of nutritional outcomes it confirms that the social transfer program targets poor households and households with low nutritional status nevertheless the study fails to find econometric evidence that the nutritional objectives are being achieved

modelling the causes and manifestation of bank stress an example from the financial crisis in this study i model the predictors and manifestation of bank stress during the financial crisis using a multiple indicator multiple cause model unlike most early warning models that predict failure probabilities this article describes a framework for predicting a broader notion of bank stress that need not rely on regulatory decisions as such this method can be easily applied to large institutions and avoids the complications associated with modelling a regulatory decision such as failure or a camels downgrade using bank reliance on term auction facility funds and the out of sample incidence of failures and acquisitions i demonstrate that the measure of bank stress generated here accords with other notions of bank level distress finally this method catalogues predictors of distress during the financial crisis thus this article can help assess the validity of several recent regulatory proposals i find that those banks entering the crisis with more tier 1 capital more liquid balance sheets

the finance growth nexus evidence from bank branch deregulation this paper provides evidence that financial markets can directly affect economic growth by studying the relaxation of bank branch restrictions in the united states we find that the rates of real per capita growth in income and output increase significantly following intrastate branch reform we also argue that the observed changes in growth are the result of changes in the banking system improvements in the quality of bank lending not increased volume of bank lending appear to be responsible for faster growth

take it to the limit innovative cvar applications to extreme credit risk measurement abstract the global financial crisis gfc demonstrated the devastating impact of extreme credit risk on global economic stability we develop four credit models to better measure credit risk in extreme economic circumstances by applying innovative conditional value at risk cvar techniques to structural models called xtreme s transition models xtreme t quantile regression models xtreme q and the author s unique itransition model xtreme i which incorporates industry factors into transition matrices we find the xtreme s and xtreme q models to be the most responsive to changing market conditions the paper also demonstrates how the models can be used to determine capital buffers required to deal with extreme credit risk

charter value risk taking and systemic risk in banking before and after the global financial crisis of 2007 2008 we investigate how bank charter value affects risk for a sample of oecd banks by using standalone and systemic risk measures before during and after the global financial crisis of 2007 2008 prio

agency relationships in family firms theory and evidence does owner management necessarily eliminate the agency costs of ownership drawing on agency literature and on the economic theory of the household we argue that private ownership and owner management expose privately held owner managed firms to agency threats ignored by jensen s and meckling s 1976 agency model private ownership and owner management not only reduce the effectiveness of external control mechanisms they also expose firms to a self control problem created by incentives that cause owners to take actions which harm themselves as well as those around them jensen 1994 p 43 thus shareholders have incentive to invest resources in curbing both managerialand owner opportunism we extend this thesis to the domain of the family firm after developing hypotheses which describe how family dynamics and specifically altruism exacerbate agency problems experienced by these privately held owner managed firms we use data obtained from a large scale survey of family businesses to field test our hypotheses and find evidence which suggests support for our proposed theory finally we discuss the implications of our theory for research on family and other types of privately held owner managed firms

are bank shareholders enemies of regulators or a potential source of market discipline abstract in moral hazard models bank shareholders have incentives to transfer wealth from the deposit insurer that is maximize put option value by pursuing riskier strategies for safe banks with large charter value however the risk taking incentive is outweighed by the possibility of losing charter value focusing on the relationship between tobin s q and an ex ante measure of the failure probability this paper develops a semi parametric model for estimating the critical level of bank risk at which put option value starts outweighing charter value from these estimates we infer the prevalence of moral hazard examining publicly held bank holding companies bhc during the tumultuous 1986 1992 period we find that shareholders risk taking incentives were confined to a small fraction of highly risky institutions furthermore our analysis shows that the inflection point at which banks begin to tilt in favor of moral hazard increased substantially in 1993 2005 these findings are encouraging to bank regulators and legislators because they indicate that tighter capital rules and more rigorous supervision introduced by several legislative initiatives in the 1990s have helped squeeze a lot of the moral hazard incentives out of the banking system

explaining bank distress in eastern european transition economies abstract this paper considers the joint role of macroeconomic structural and bank specific factors in explaining the occurrence of banking problems in the nineteen eastern european transition countries over the last decade with data at the individual bank level we show using a discrete time survival model that all three factors interact in their impact and have a rich dynamic profile which underlines the highly volatile cycles challenging the stability of banks in this region a fragile funding basis accompanied by high exposure to market risk in an environment of reforms and macroeconomic disturbances is the typical precursor of bank distress

is there persistence in the impact of emergency food aid evidence on consumption food security and assets in rural ethiopia we identify the impact of emergency food aid programs after the 2002 drought in rural ethiopia on future welfare based on a difference in differences matching estimator participation in food for work increases growth in total consumption and food consumption eighteen months after the drought separately receiving free food raises growth in food consumption but surprisingly negatively impacts food security food for work benefited households in the middle and upper tail of the consumption distribution while the better targeted free food program benefited the poorest evidence suggests these impacts demonstrate accumulated and persistent effects of food aid received in the first twelve months after the drought

bank regulation property prices and early warning systems for banking crises in oecd countries abstract early warning systems ews for banking crises generally omit bank capital bank liquidity and property prices most work on ews has been for global samples dominated by emerging market crises where time series data on bank capital adequacy and property prices are typically absent we estimate logit crisis models for oecd countries finding strong effects from capital adequacy and liquidity ratios as well as property prices and can exclude traditional variables higher capital adequacy and liquidity ratios have a marked effect on the crisis probabilities implying long run benefits to offset some of the costs that such regulations may impose

risk based capital requirements and bank portfolio risk abstract we construct a linear programming model and analyze the effectiveness of r b capital adequacy standards when bank deposits are fully insured we derive a set of optimal asset risk weights given a constraint in raising equity and using these weights the r b capital plan is an effective regulation mechanism without a constraint on equity maximum leverage restrictions and r b capital plans are mutually exclusive alternatives as we deviate from the optimal risk weights a combination of a leverage restriction and a r b equity ratio seems to be the more appropriate approach to controlling bank portfolio risk

market discipline financial crisis and regulatory changes evidence from indonesian banks abstract following the 1997 1998 financial crisis indonesian banks experienced major regulatory changes including the adoption of the blanket guarantee scheme bgs in 1998 a limited guarantee lg in 2005 and changes in capital regulation in 1998 and 2001 we examine the impact of these regulatory changes on market discipline during the period 1995 2009 the price of deposits is used to measure market discipline in a dynamic panel data methodology on a sample of 104 commercial banks we find a weakening of market discipline following the introduction of the bgs the result is consistent with the deposit insurance scheme being credible in the lower capital requirement environment the adoption of lg in a recovering economy also mitigates the role of market discipline however market discipline is more pronounced in listed banks than unlisted banks and in foreign banks than domestic banks these results have important implications for banking regulation and supervision particularly during a crisis period

reaping what you sow an empirical analysis of international patent harmonization abstract this paper extends analysis of the gatt uruguay round by quantifying the impact of international patent harmonization as implied by the trips agreement patent harmonization has the capacity to generate large transfers of income between countries the us being the major beneficiary developing countries are major contributors to these transfers but canada the uk and japan also make sizable contributions

market discipline and deposit insurance reform in japan abstract on april 1 2002 the japanese government lifted a blanket guarantee of all deposits and began limiting the coverage of time deposits this paper uses this deposit insurance reform as a natural experiment to investigate the relationship between deposit insurance coverage and market discipline i find that the reform raised the sensitivity of interest rates on deposits and that of deposit quantity to default risk in addition the interest rate differentials between partially insured large time deposits and fully insured ordinary deposits increased for risky banks these results suggest that the deposit insurance reform enhanced market discipline in japan i also find however that too big to fail tbtf policy became a more important determinant of interest rates and deposit allocation after the reform thereby partially offsetting the positive effects of the deposit insurance reform on overall market discipline

block ownership and firm specific information this study examines the impact of block ownership on the firm s information environment previous research shows that stock price efficiency depends on the cost of acquiring private information as well as on the precision of this information blockholders have a clear advantage over diffuse atomistic shareholders in terms of the precision and acquisition cost of their private information we hypothesize that this informational advantage will manifest itself primarily in the firm specific component of stock returns our empirical findings confirm that blockholders increase the probability of informed trading and idiosyncratic volatility and decrease the firm s stock return synchronicity these results hold for both inside and outside blockholders but are insignificant for blocks controlled by employee stock ownership plans esops overall our findings support the contention that ownership structure plays a significant role in shaping the firm s information environment

food aid and child nutrition in rural ethiopia abstract this paper uses a unique panel data set from ethiopia to examine the determinants of participation in and receipts of food aid through free distribution fd and food for work ffw results show that aggregate rainfall and livestock shocks increase household participation in both fd and ffw ffw also seems well targeted to asset poor households the probability of receiving fd does not appear to be targeted based on household wealth but fd receipts are lower for wealthier households the effects of fd and ffw on child nutritional status differ depending on the modality of food aid and the gender of the child both ffw and fd have a positive direct impact on weight for height households invest proceeds from fd in girls nutrition while earnings from ffw are manifested in better nutrition for boys the effects of the gender of the aid recipient are not conclusive

does nutrition sensitive aid reduce the prevalence of undernourishment abstract this paper examines the impacts of nutrition sensitive sector aid inflows on the prevalence of undernourishment we find nutrition sensitive aid can reduce undernourishment estimates suggest that a 10 increase in overall nutrition sensitive aid would approximately decrease hunger by 1 1 2 years later on average among nutrition sensitive aid inflows we find that emergency food aid reduces hunger a year later and that food aid is more effective than emergency food aid at reducing medium term hunger a 10 increase in food aid per capita would result in a 1 3 decrease in hunger 3 years later on average against 1 for a similar increase in emergency food aid per capita generally the size of the aid effects on hunger depend on the time horizon considered in the empirical analysis our findings provide supporting evidence for the prioritization of specific nutrition sensitive investments within the sdg agenda while simultaneously challenging the relative reallocation of nutrition sensitive aid that has reduced the role of food and emergency food aid inflows

ownership structure speculation and shareholder intervention an institution holding shares in a firm can use information about the firm both for trading speculation and for deciding whether to intervene to improve firm performance intervention increases the value of the institution s existing shareholdings but intervention only increases the institution s trading profits if it enhances the precision of the institution s information relative to that of uninformed traders thus the ability to speculate can increase or decrease institutional intervention we examine key factors that affect the intervention decision the usefulness of short swing provisions and restricted shares in encouraging institutional intervention and implications for ownership structure across different firms institutional investors hold an ever greater fraction of corporate america s equity traditionally these institutions were stock pickers who tried to beat the market through trading if a firm whose stock they held seemed headed for trouble these investors headed for the door the wall street rule more recently some of these institutions have been using the ownership rights attached to their shares to pressure firms to act in the shareholders interest some have even argued that there is a synergy between gathering information for use in trading shares speculation and intelligently pressuring firms to improve performance intervention we argue that these motives can also conflict analyzing these motives allows us to predict which firms are most likely to attract institutional intervention which in turn has crosssectional implications for firm ownership structure recent examples suggest that institutional investors with large stakes sometimes intervene and sometimes follow the wall street rule so that there is indeed a choice to be studied in the early 1990s there was a wave of activism by a variety of large institutional investors among them calpers the california public employees pension fund putnam management a mutual fund manager and j p morgan a bank holding company these institu

early warning systems and systemic banking crises in low income countries a multinomial logit approach abstract this paper estimates an early warning system ews for predicting systemic banking crises in a sample of low income countries in sub saharan africa since the average duration of crises in this sample of countries is longer than one year the predictive performance of standard binomial logit models is likely to be hampered by the so called crisis duration bias the bias arises from the decision to either treat crisis years after the onset of a crisis as non crisis years or remove them altogether from the model to overcome this potential drawback we propose a multinomial logit approach which is shown to improve the predictive power of our ews compared to the binomial logit model our results suggest that crisis events in low income countries are associated with low economic growth drying up of banking system liquidity and widening of foreign exchange net open positions

what s in a sign trademark law and economic theory the aim of this paper is to summarize the extant theory as it relates to the economics of trademark and to give some suggestions for further research with reference to distinct streams of literature the proposed line of study inevitably looks at the complex relationship between signs and economics copyright 2006 the authors journal compilation 2006 blackwell publishing ltd

food aid and household food security in a conflict situation empirical evidence from northern uganda it is well established that armed political conflict has a detrimental effect on food security and household welfare conflict induces food insecurity by reducing own food production access to food through the market and various other resources to sustain healthy and productive lives one way of mitigating these adverse effects is to provide food aid in this study we evaluate the impact of a world food programme intervention on household food security and asset protection among conflict affected households in northern uganda we employ propensity score matching to estimate the average treatment effect on food expenditure food consumption and preservation of assets using a sample of 1265 observations from a 2008 survey our results reveal that the operation s system of targeting beneficiaries was effective and in accordance with programme objectives food aid considerably reduced food expenditure of households suggesting that recipients were net buyers of food and that the food aid received was effectively consumed within the household a corresponding positive effect on non food expenditure was not found our results also indicate that food aid was effective in increasing meals consumed and in avoiding distress destocking of low value assets but surprisingly only for male headed households

financial distress drivers in brazilian banks a dynamic slacks approach abstract this study applies the dynamic slacks based model dsbm developed by tone and tsutsui 2010 in order to assess the evolution of input saving output increasing potentials in major brazilian banks from 1996 to 2011 we propose that these potentials or slacks can be used as proxies for an eventual financial distress situation in the future the main research objective is to determine whether or not different characteristics of bank type related to ownership size and merger and acquisition processes are significantly related to inefficiency levels and by extension to an eventual financial distress situation since higher inefficiency levels also imply lower input saving output decreasing potentials based on a balanced panel model secondary data from economatica were collected and analyzed results indicate higher inefficiency levels and slacks in small public and national banks policy implications are also addressed

the macroeconomic sources of systemic risk in the banking sectors of five new eu member states abstract rapid credit growth has been one of the most pervasive developments in recent years in central and eastern europe our estimates support the hypothesis that the growth of credit and the amount of available finance might harm banking performance and deteriorate non performing loans npl dynamics most probably due to the overheating of economies in the five nmss the procyclicality of banking sector performance and high economic activities growth is a signal of an economy overheating and therefore a slowdown in economic activity is likely to accelerate the growth of the npl ratio

risk taking behavior of banks under regulation abstract this paper analyzes the value maximization of regulated banks within a moral hazard framework in the model regulators monitor both the capital ratio and the asset portfolio and banks simultaneously select the optimum capital ratio and asset portfolio a key assumption is that a bank cannot expect a positive put option value once it is classified as risky by regulators the optimum values of the two variables depend on investment opportunities and charter values as well as regulatory parameters the model that explicitly incorporates regulation can explain various phenomena that are seemingly inconsistent with the predictions of moral hazard models for example a positive relationship between the capital ratio and the riskiness of the asset portfolio a particularly interesting result is that a larger charter value results in a higher risk interior solution

innovation and intangible investment in europe japan and the united states this paper sets out theory and measurement of how intangible investment might capture innovation and what data on intangibles look like for the eu japan and the us we also look at complementarities between information and communications technology ict and intangibles spillovers from intangibles to growth and policy implications copyright 2013 oxford university press

macroeconomic sources of foreign exchange risk in new eu members abstract we address the issue of foreign exchange risk and its macroeconomic determinants in several new eu members we derive the observable macroeconomic factors consumption and inflation using the stochastic discount factor sdf approach the joint distribution of excess returns in the foreign exchange market and the factors are modeled using a multivariate garch in mean specification our findings show that both real and nominal factors play important roles in explaining the variability of the foreign exchange risk premium both types of factors should be included in monetary general equilibrium models employed to study excess returns to contribute to the further stability of domestic currencies the new eu members should strive to implement stabilization policies aimed at achieving nominal as well as real convergence with the core eu members

federal deposit insurance regulatory policy and optimal bank capital this paper seeks to explain the combination of explicit and implicit pricing for deposit insurance employed by the fdic essentially the fdic sells two products insurance and regulation to span the product space it must and does set two prices we argue that the need to establish regulatory disincentives to bank risk taking is the heart of the controversy over the adequacy of bank capital and that the ability to close risky banks before exhausting their charter value i e the value of their right to continue in business stands at the center of these disincentives and in front of the fdic s insurance reserves just as a book shouldn t be judged by its cover a government agency shouldn t be judged by the words behind its initials with the fdic federal deposit insurance corporation the agency s name describes only part of its formal operations the fdic is quasi governmental has a regional structure and sells deposit insurance however the initials fail to convey the fdic s critical place in the governmental regulatory structure as the sole federal overseer of the approximately 8900 state chartered commercial banks that have chosen not to belong the federal reserve system reflecting the federal reserve s membership problem the number of these banks is growing year by year besides selling deposit insurance at bargain explicit rates the fdic performs four regulatory functions 1 entry regulation it passes on new banks applications for deposit insurance and on branch and merger proposals as well thereby protecting the value of existing bank charters 2 examination two thirds of fdic employees are concerned with inspecting bank records and supervising managerial activity 3 regulation of deposit rates and conditions for withdrawal by tradition fdic policies on these matters conform entirely with regulations applicable to federal reserve member banks and 4 disposition of failed banks when an insured bank fails the fdic usually chooses not to liquidate it 2

incorporating equity market information into supervisory monitoring models we examine whether equity market variables such as stock returns and equity based default probabilities are useful to u s bank supervisors for assessing the condition of domestic bank holding companies we develop a model of supervisory ratings that combines supervisory and equity market information we find that the model s forecasts anticipate supervisory rating changes by up to four quarters relative to simply using supervisory variables the inclusion of equity market variables in the model does not improve forecast accuracy however we argue that equity market information should still be useful for forecasting supervisory ratings and should be incorporated into supervisory monitoring models

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

using market information in prudential bank supervision a review of the u s empirical evidence in principle market and government supervision provide alternative devices for controlling governing any type of corporation most national governments have instituted nonmarket regulatory mechanisms for banking firms on the grounds that market based mechanisms do not adequately discipline banks but what evidence supports this assessment why must governments assure bank solvency but not the solvency of other firms government oversight naturally displaces private efforts to evaluate and control financial firms moreover if the banking business changes over time as it assuredly has in the past decade or two the best combination of government and private supervision may change concurrently this paper reviews and evaluates the growing empirical literature on private investors abilities to assess the financial condition of banking firms the evidence supports the proposition that market investors and analysts could reasonably provide a greater proportion of corporate governance services for large traded u s financial firms

interest rates and bank risk taking abstract a recent line of research views the low interest rate environment of the early to mid 2000s as an element that triggered increased risk taking appetite of banks in search for yield this paper uses approximately 18000 annual observations on euro area banks over the period 2001 2008 and presents strong empirical evidence that low interest rates indeed increase bank risk taking substantially this result is robust across a number of different specifications that account inter alia for the potential endogeneity of interest rates and or the dynamics of bank risk notably among the banks of the large euro area countries this effect is less pronounced for french institutions which held on average a relatively low level of risk assets finally the distributional effects of interest rates on bank risk taking due to individual bank characteristics reveal that the impact of interest rates on risk assets is diminished for banks with higher equity capital and is amplified for banks with higher off balance sheet items

too dispersed to monitor ownership dispersion monitoring and the prediction of bank distress this paper conducts an empirical assessment of the theories stating that ownership concentration improves the quality of shareholders monitoring in contrast with other studies we do not use regressions of risk performance on ownership concentration instead we build an early warning model of bank distress that includes a leading indicator derived from banks share price the merton kmv distance to default dd the significance of this indicator depends on the efficacy of shareholders monitoring on a sample of european banks we show that the predictive power of the dd is satisfactory only when banks shareholding is characterized by the presence of blockholders

savings and loan ownership structure and expense preference abstract this paper studies the influence of ownership structure on managerial expense preference behavior the hypothesis is that the greater the diffusion of ownership the weaker is the monitoring by owners and the greater is the degree of expense preference behavior whereas expense preference behavior affects inputs particularly on the job consumption of managers well functioning managerial labor markets should resolve the problem by equating the total compensation of managers across firms of different ownership structures a more serious problem however is the potential impact of expense preference behavior on output evidence from the savings and loan industry is adduced indicating that the more diffuse ownership structures associated with mutuality exhibit greater agency costs through the expansion of inputs and outputs beyond profit maximizing levels

does food aid really have disincentive effects new evidence from sub saharan africa summary limited empirical evidence exists either to refute or confirm the pervasive belief that food aid has significant disincentive effects on recipient food production using household level data from rural ethiopia we demonstrate that while simple descriptive statistics appear consistent with the disincentive effects hypothesis once one controls properly for the endogeneity of food aid receipt no empirical support remains for the hypothesis that food aid creates disincentive effects among recipient households the macro economic evidence yields similar findings applying vector autoregression methods to national level data controlling for possible confounding variables we find that food aid has no disincentive effect on food production

deregulation and bank financial policy the standard view that banks can value maximize by exploiting non risk rated deposit insurance ignores the potential loss of a valuable bank charter due to insolvency recognition of this effect changes the bank s optimal financial policy and can induce extreme risk averting as well as risk taking behavior however as the value of the bank charter falls the risk taking strategy is more apt to dominate therefore current deregulation of the banking industry by easing entry and devaluing charters holds the potential for increases in the incidence of insolvency unless offsetting policies are instituted

blocks liquidity and corporate control the paper develops a simple model of corporate ownership structure in which costs and benefits of ownership concentration are analyzed the model cornpares the liquidity benefits obtained through dispersed corporate ownership with the benefits from efficient management control achieved by some degree of ownership concentration the paper reexamines the free rider problem in corporate control in the presence of liquidity trading derives predictions for the trade and pricing of blocks and provides criteria for the optimal choice of ownership structure the recent incomplete contracting approach in corporate finance has considerably improved our understanding of how small firms determine their capital structure the basic setting considered in this line of research is one where a founder manager seeks funding from one or several financiers the main premise is that the founder manager in her dealings with the financiers is primarily concerned with maintaining her private benefits of control for small firms these are often quite large relative to the financial returns thus for a small firm the problem of determining the financial structure often reduces to the problem of how to obtain fundingr while giving away as little control as possible to the financiers of course most financiers insist on some form of protection so that the final compromise reached in most financial contracts for small firms is one resembling a debt contract or a venture capital contract which protects the founder manager s control as long as the firm is performing adequately this perspective for small firms does not extend naturally to large firms because the private benefits of control of the managers for large firms are likely to be small relative to the firm s monetary returns so that protection of these benefits is not an overriding consideration moreover large firms

food and cash transfers evidence from colombia we study food engel curves among the poor population targeted by a conditional cash transfer programme in colombia after controlling for the endogeneity of total consumption and for the price variability across villages our estimates imply that an increase in consumption by 10 would lead to a decrease of 1 in the share of food however quasi experimental estimates of the impact of the programme show that the share of food increases this result is not inconsistent with the hypothesis that the programme could increase the bargaining power of women inducing a more than proportional increase in food consumption

the information content of bank exam ratings and subordinated debt prices do supervisory examinations of large commercial banking firms produce useful information not already reflected in market prices to investigate this question we apply a new research methodology to data on bank exam ratings and the subordinated debt risk spreads of their parent holding companies we find that government exams do produce new value relevant information that debenture prices do not immediately reflect this information and that the market prices the likely regulatory actions implied by this information these results have implications for market versus regulatory discipline at large banking firms and for proposals to make subordinated debt mandatory for these firms

bank failures and bank fundamentals a comparative analysis of latin america and east asia during the nineties using bank level data abstract this paper uses bank level data from recent banking crises in east asia and latin america to address the following two questions 1 to what extent did individual bank conditions explain the failures 2 in terms of their fundamentals was it mainly the weak banks ex ante that failed in the crisis countries the results show that for the two regions bank level fundamentals significantly affect the likelihood of collapse for these banks systemic shocks both macroeconomic and liquidity that triggered the crises mainly destabilized the weak banks ex ante particularly in east asia which raises questions about the role that regional differences play for the degree of banking sector resilience to systemic shocks in the financial and macroeconomic environment

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

optimal bank reorganization policies and the pricing of federal deposit insurance optimal dynamic regulatory policies for closing ailing banks and for deposit insurance premia are derived as functions of the rate of flow of bank deposits and interest rate on deposits the economy s risk free interest rate and the regulators bank audit administration costs under competitive conditions the threshold assets to deposits ratio below which a bank should be optimally closed is shown to be greater than or equal to one optimal deposit insurance premia and probabilities of bank closure are shown to be nondecreasing in the bank s risk on investment and nonincreasing in the bank s current assets to deposits ratio should regulatory agencies close reorganize an ailing federally insured financial institution if so when the recent record rate of failures of savings and loans associations s ls has renewed the urgency of this question the regulatory agencies are empowered but not required to reorganize financial institutions that are statutorily insolvent i e have zero or negative regulatory net worth recently regulators have in many instances permitted insolvent financial institutions to remain in operation 2 also while debating on the increase of the proposed funding of the federal deposit insurers the u s congress argued whether it would be desirable and if so when to close more s ls thus when regulators should close a troubled financial institution has become a major question of bank regulatory policy while the existing academic literature provides powerful insights into the structure and pricing of the insurers liability this literature offers very little guidance regarding the timing of bank reorganizations 3 indeed to the best of our knowledge the value of the federal

child growth shocks and food aid in rural ethiopia this brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study entitled child growth shocks and food aid in rural ethiopia conducted between 1995 and 1996 in ethiopia the study observed the impact of food aid on child growth and shocks in communities on the child level food aid has a positive significant impact on the growth in height of children the total amount of food aid appears on average to be sufficient to offset the negative effects of plot damage on child growth given the fact there remains a massive amount of child stunting there must be large amounts of mis targeting of aid girls seem to be more resilient to shocks than boys

appropriating signs and meaning the elusive economics of trademark this paper deals with economic analysis of trademark its presence in markets is originally connected with the problem of information asymmetries and the need to provide information for assisting exchanges so as to avert the market failure brought about by adverse selection however this information conveying function is also accompanied by a differentiation effect arising from the power of persuasion that signs can exert on individuals the exploitation of differentiation has given rise to the practice of branding which ties markets and consumption to the realms of meaning and experience branding is so all pervasive in today s economy as to have somehow transfigured it so that the role of persuasion is now pre eminent nonetheless the mainstream economic theory tends to resist acknowledging this change which would to a large extent call into question well established hypotheses and theoretical tools the general response has therefore been to assume that the informational role of trademark predominates and to use this hypothesis to construct models welfare evaluations and policy prescriptions that bear little or no relation to the actual markets the opposing approach in the shadow of the nelson s and arrow s seminal papers on economics of information is recognising the idiosyncratic character of information and therefore drawing conclusions and devising solutions that while still based upon the welfare criterion also incorporate a wider awareness and a deeper representation of the scenario under study the present work attempts to move in this direction showing how different disciplines can provide some key epistemological tools for enabling economists to effectively evaluate the welfare outcomes of the introduction and progressive alteration of a particular intellectual property right within the realm of signs and meanings

bond rating agencies and stock analysts who knows what when both bond rating agencies and stock analysts evaluate publicly traded companies and com municate their opinions to investors comparing the timeliness of each we find that granger causality flows both ways while most bond downgrades are preceded by declines in actual and forecast earnings both actual earnings and forecasts of future earnings tend to fall following downgrades although part of this post downgrade forecast revision can be attributed to negative news regarding actual earnings most appears to be reaction to the downgrade itself we find little change in actual earnings following upgrades analysts however tend to increase their forecasts of future earnings

the global distribution of trademarks some stylized facts trademarks are words signs symbols or combinations thereof that identify goods as manufactured by a particular person or a company therefore allowing consumers to distinguish between goods originating in different sources trademarks belong to the wider family of intellectual property rights iprs and once registered benefit from legal protection against unauthorized use by entities other than the legal owner while some suggest that cross border registrations of iprs may be associated with welfare transfers from developing to industrial countries surprisingly little is known about an important component of the global ipr system namely the worldwide distribution of trademark registrations this study provides the first step in filling this gap in the literature its purpose is to present some new stylized facts which emerge from the analysis of a dataset compiled by the authors based on the statistical information published by the world intellectual property organization wipo questions of interest include the distribution of trademarks between countries of different income levels the share of trademark registrations accounted for by foreign residents and its variation across different income groups the extent to which poor countries participate in the international trademark system and the distribution of registrations across different sectors of the economy

the structure of ownership and the theory of the firm the separation of ownership from control produces a condition where the interests of owner and of ultimate manager may and often do diverge and where many of the checks which formerly operated to limit the use of power disappear in creating these new relationships the quasi public corporation may fairly be said to work a revolution it has divided ownership into nominal ownership and the power formerly joined to it thereby the corporation has changed the nature of profit seeking enterprise 1

capital regulation and bank risk taking a note abstract this paper examines theoretically the effects of more stringent capital regulation on bank asset portfolio risk the analysis shows that for a value maximizing bank incentives to increase asset risk decline as its capital increases thus as long as regulatory efforts to contain asset risk and size are not reduced more stringent capital regulation unambiguously reduces the expected liability of the deposit insurance system

does deposit insurance improve financial intermediation evidence from the russian experiment this study examines how the introduction of deposit insurance affects depositors and banks using the deposit insurance scheme introduced into the russian banking system as a natural experiment the fundamental research question is whether the introduction of deposit insurance leads to a more effective banking system as evidenced by increased deposit taking and decreased reliance upon state owned banks as custodians of retail deposits we find that banks entering the new deposit insurance system increase both their level of retail deposits and their ratios of retail deposits to total assets relative to banks that do not enter the new deposit insurance system these results hold up in a multivariate panel data analysis that controls for bank and time random effects the longer a bank has been entered into the deposit insurance system the greater is its level of deposits and its ratio of deposits to assets moreover this effect is stronger for regional banks and for smaller banks we also find that implementation of the new deposit insurance system has the effect of leveling the playing field between state owned banks and privately owned banks finally we find strong evidence of moral hazard following implementation of deposit insurance in the form of increased bank risk taking financial risk and to a lesser degree operating risk increase following implementation

determinants of food security in southern ethiopia at the household level in the early 1980s a paradigm shift occurred in the field of food security following amartya sens 1981 claims that food insecurity is more of a demand concern affecting the poor s access to food than a supply concern affecting availability of food at the national level despite the wide acceptance of sen s thinking many controversies including the relative importance of supply side versus demand side variables in causing and solving food insecurity have remained in academic and policy circles this study develops a recursive household food security model within the framework of consumer demand and production theories following singh et al 1986 and parses out the relative importance of supply side versus demand side variables in determining household food security in southern ethiopia based on results of a test of full reduced model and the magnitude of changes in conditional probabilities of food security we conclude that the supply side variables are more powerful determinants of food security than the demand side variables

separating the likelihood and timing of bank failure abstract we use a split population survival time model to separate the determinants of bank failure from the factors influencing the survival time of failing banks basic indicators of a bank s condition such as capital troubled assets and net income are important in explaining the timing of bank failure however many of the other variables typically included in bank failure models such as measures of bank liquidity are not associated with the time to failure the results also suggest that the closure of large banks is not delayed relative to the closure of small banks

an empirical test of the incentive effects of deposit insurance the case of junk bonds at savings and loan associations this paper analyzes how financial markets reacted to s l diversification into junk bonds the authors report that junk bond holdings are positively correlated with both the volatility of s l equity returns and the interest rates paid on large cds next they examine the impact of junk bonds on equity returns for poorly capitalized s ls greater risk taking increases the value of deposit insurance and should lead to higher stock returns however a well capitalized institution that increases junk bond holdings should not experience stock price gains the authors find that this is the case for the sample of s ls they studied copyright 1994 by ohio state university press