forest incomes and rural livelihoods in chiradzulu district malawi abstract this paper examines forest income among rural dwellers in one of malawi s most densely populated districts chiradzulu 160 households were interviewed in two sites only 20 km apart purposely selected on the basis of access to a forest reserve people are extremely poor with 97 having incomes of less than 1 usd day forest income constitutes around 15 of total income only non farm income 47 and agriculture 28 rank higher the poorest segment depends more on forest income than the least poor group but the medium income group exhibits the highest dependence fuelwood constitutes the major source of such income followed by fodder the incomes mainly support current consumption people with better access to the forest reserve have higher total income forest income and relative forest income as revealed through a gini coefficient analysis forest resources have an important income equalizing effect across rural households a particular group of resource poor farmers 8 1 of sample with little access to agricultural land and a high representation of female heads derives an average of 65 of their income from the forest an important policy lesson is that restricting people s access to forest resources can have substantial effects on household livelihoods and welfare and would serve to increase income inequalities in the area livelihood researchers should now recognize the substantial income from forest resources

rational heuristics expectations and behaviors in evolving economies with heterogeneous interacting agents we analyze the individual and macroeconomic impacts of heterogeneous expectations and action rules within an agent based model populated by heterogeneous interacting firms agents have to cope with a complex evolving economy characterized by deep uncertainty resulting from technical change imperfect information coordination hurdles and structural breaks in these circumstances we find that neither individual nor macroeconomic dynamics improve when agents replace myopic expectations with less naive learning rules our results suggest that fast and frugal robust heuristics may not be a second best option but rather rational responses in complex and changing macroeconomic environments jel c63 d8 e32 e6 o4

the real effects of liquidity during the financial crisis evidence from automobiles illiquidity in short term credit markets during the financial crisis might have severely curtailed the supply of nonbank consumer credit using a new data set linking every car sold in the united states to the credit supplier involved in each transaction we find that the collapse of the asset backed commercial paper market reduced the financing capacity of such nonbank lenders as captive leasing companies in the automobile industry as a result car sales in counties that traditionally depended on nonbank lenders declined sharply although other lenders increased their supply of credit the net aggregate effect of illiquidity on car sales is large and negative we conclude that the decline in auto sales during the financial crisis was caused in part by a credit supply shock driven by the illiquidity of the most important providers of consumer finance in the auto loan market these results also imply that interventions aimed at arresting illiquidity in short term credit markets might have helped contain the real effects of the crisis

social capital in community level environmental governance a critique social capital is often claimed to facilitate collective action regarding the management of complex environmental goods and services however there is little systematic analysis in the literature that explains the way social capital aids in fostering collective action the paper integrates ideas from institutional ecological economics sociology and anthropology to argue that power relations involving struggle and resistance should be acknowledged as they affect collective action we address the question of why social capital should not be straightforwardly associated positively with common property resource management to unravel the complexity of the links between social capital collective action and common property resource management the concepts of common knowledge and symbolic power are introduced

bundles duties and rights a revised framework for analysis of natural resource property rights regimes in their 1992 paper schlager and ostrom presented a property rights framework characterized by nested cumulative attributes it has become arguably the most ubiquitous framework for analysis of natural resources and property rights we revisit their contribution and discuss how the framework could evolve to address increasingly complex situations with particular attention to institutional change we devote increased attention to duties and liabilities associated with right allocation tying the framework to a broader property rights literature we conclude with an application to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation redd illustrating how revisions to the framework facilitate contemporary institutional analysis

bad times good credit banks limited knowledge about borrowers creditworthiness constitutes an important friction in credit markets is this friction deeper in recessions thereby contributing to cyclical swings in credit or is the friction reduced as bad times reveal information about firm quality we test these alternative hypotheses using internal ratings data from a large swedish cross border bank and credit scores from a credit bureau the ability to classify corporate borrowers by credit quality is greater during bad times and worse during good times soft and hard information measures both display countercyclical patterns our results suggest that information frictions in corporate credit markets are intrinsically countercyclical and not due to cyclical variation in monitoring effort the presence of countercyclical information frictions provides a rationale for countercyclical provisions or capital in banks to smooth credit cycles

power struggle dispute and alliance over local resources analyzing democratic decentralization of natural resources through the lenses of africa inland fisheries summary this paper is based on a global review of fisheries decentralization programs co management in sub saharan africa partly challenging the current narrative but in line with experience in other sectors e g forestry the review shows that the outcomes of these decentralizations have not been systematically positive in most cases fisheries co management failed to improve governance but simply altered the distribution of power and responsibility amongst the different stakeholders in this new political landscape poorly designed reforms have enabled a variety of usual and new local actors to advance their own agendas often at the detriment of the direct end users fisherfolk

changing to gray decentralization and the emergence of volatile socio legal configurations in central kalimantan indonesia decentralization policy narratives articulated by donor agencies tend to describe decentralization as a technical process of policy design and implementation advocating decentralization as a solution to particular problems drawing on research carried out in the indonesian province of central kalimantan following the inception of a decentralization program this article examines how political processes at the national district and village levels have led to highly volatile socio legal configurations that create insecurity and heighten resource conflicts it concludes that while the politics surrounding decentralization in different domains have ensured that the patterns of governance inherited from the past remain precariously distant from the objectives of good governance decentralization has also opened up space for positive changes

can redistributive reform be achieved via market based voluntary land transfer schemes evidence and lessons from the philippines this article examines market led agrarian reform mlar and its variants in the form of voluntary land transfer schemes under the comprehensive agrarian reform program carp in the philippines analysis of mlar variants in the philippines offers a preview of what is likely to happen when the mlar model currently being pushed by the world bank is implemented in the real world not only do mlar and mlar like schemes fail to promote redistributive reform they also undermine potentially redistributive state led land reform policies

credit market frictions and capital structure dynamics we study the implications of credit market frictions for the dynamics of corporate capital structure and the risk of default of corporations to do so we develop a dynamic capital structure model in which firms face uncertainty regarding their ability to raise funds in credit markets and have to search for investors when seeking to adjust their capital structure we provide a general analysis of shareholders dynamic financing and default decisions show when markov perfect equilibria in financing and default barrier strategies exist and when uniqueness can be achieved we then use the model to generate a number of novel testable implications relating credit market frictions to target leverage the pace and size of capital structure changes creditor turnover and the likelihood of default c 2014 elsevier inc all rights reserved

on two part tariff competition in a homogeneous product duopoly abstract we explore aspects of two part tariff competition between duopolists providing a homogeneous service when consumers differ with respect to their usage levels competition in only one price component the fee or the rate may allow both firms to enjoy positive profits if the other price component has been set at levels different enough between firms fixing one price component alters the nature of competition indirectly introducing an element of product differentiation endogenous market segmentation emerges with the heavier users choosing the lower rate firm and the lighter users choosing the lower fee firm when no price component can be negative competition becomes softer profits tend to be higher but there is also a disadvantage for the firm that starts with a higher fee than that of its rival

fiscal and monetary policies in complex evolving economies what is the most appropriate combination of fiscal and monetary policies in economies subject to banking crises and deep recessions we study this issue using an agent based model that is able to reproduce a wide array of macro and micro empirical regularities simulation results suggest that policy mixes associating unconstrained counter cyclical fiscal policy and monetary policy targeting employment is required to stabilise the economy we also show that discipline guided fiscal rules can be self defeating as they depress the economy without improving public finances finally we find that the effects of monetary and fiscal policies become sharper as the level of income inequality increases

monetary policy and regional availability of debt financing the relative availability of bond and bank financing should affect the firm s external financing and investment decisions we define a measure that proxies for the regional borrowing inflexibility to substitute between bank and bond financing debt inflexibility debt inflexibility tilts the firm s financial structure towards equity and reduces investment the impact is stronger during the period of tight monetary policy particularly for smaller firms and firms without banking relationships debt inflexibility increases the sensitivity of cash holdings to cash flows reduces the likelihood of dividend payment and makes the firm more likely to pay equity in mergers and acquisitions

dancing with storks the role of power relations in payments for ecosystem services abstract the institutional change induced by payments for ecosystem services pes schemes is a messy process the uptake and outcomes of pes schemes cannot be fully explained from a rational choice perspective the notion of institutional bricolage is needed to analyse how actors assemble or reshape their actions by combining new institutions such as a pes scheme within other locally embedded institutions a case study from japan is used to illustrate how a pes scheme designed to conserve the habitat of a charismatic and endangered flagship species the oriental white stork has been reshaped by social actors to fit the locally dominant institutional logic we also show how the resulting institutional change is not only able to subvert policy makers original assumptions for instance about how to target and distribute the payments but can also contribute to the reproduction of unequal power relations

sovereign stress and smes access to finance evidence from the ecb s safe survey abstract we study the effect of sovereign stress on smes capital structure using restricted access data from the european central bank we find that during the sovereign debt crisis and controlling for borrowers quality firms in stressed countries became more likely to be denied credit to be credit rationed and to face higher loan rates less creditworthy firms were not more likely to become credit constrained suggesting no flight to quality in lending we also find that in order to make up for the decline in bank credit firms in stressed countries began relying considerably more on retained earnings and government subsidies

engaging simplifications community based resource management market processes and state agendas in upland southeast asia abstract in the struggle to secure resource rights for rural populations who gain their livelihoods from state claimed lands advocacy agendas highlight community interest in and capacity for sustainable resource management in the uplands of southeast asia the strategic simplifications of community based natural resource management cbnrm advocacy are being translated into legal frameworks and program initiatives which make rights conditional upon particular forms of social organization and livelihood as well as conservation outcomes when set in the context of agricultural intensification among both indigenous and migrant populations and the desire of many upland dwellers to claim the benefits of a fuller citizenship cbnrm offers a problematic basis for justice

can financial incentives change farmers motivations an agrarian system approach to development pathways at the nicaraguan agricultural frontier abstract this article offers a conceptual methodological approach to assess how new institutional frameworks such as pes payments for ecosystem services interact with motivations for land use change at the individual and collective level increasing empirical evidence suggests that the effects of payments on inducing long term behavioural change can vary substantially depending on how they are integrated in territorial dynamics we show how individual motivation is the result of collective societal pathways that generate particular opportunities and constraints as well as guiding ideas and habits that work within these pathways through an illustrative case study at the agricultural frontier in nicaragua we show how an agrarian system approach offers a more nuanced understanding of the dynamic interactions on the ground and allows us to better connect farmers individual motivations to collective development pathways in that territory our case study also demonstrates how a local pes intervention is unlikely to lastingly alter the production system logic of farmers or stimulate long term pro environmental behaviour unless accompanied by other types of policies

what happened financial factors in the great recession abstract at the onset of the recent global financial crisis the workhorse macroeconomic models assumed frictionless financial markets these frameworks were thus not able to anticipate the crisis nor to analyze how the disruption of credit markets changed what initially appeared like a mild downturn into the great recession since that time an explosion of both theoretical and empirical research has investigated how the financial crisis emerged and how it was transmitted to the real sector the goal of this paper is to describe what we have learned from this new research and how it can be used to understand what happened during the great recession in the process we also present some new empirical work we argue that a complete description of the great recession must take account of the financial distress facing both households and banks and as the crisis unfolded nonfinancial firms as well exploiting both panel data and time series methods we analyze the contribution of the house price decline v

to share or not to share non violence scarcity and resource access in somali region ethiopia abstract scholars in the environmental security tradition have sought to explicate the links between environmental scarcity or degradation and the onset of different forms of political violence and how these are mediated by institutional mechanisms the malthusian trap here is not a direct deterministic relationship but rather a possibility where environmental scarcity when it coincides with socio economic processes of rent seeking and exclusion triggers political conditions ripe for violent struggles this a priori attention to scarcity as causal mechanism blurs our understanding why violence occurs in some and does not in other places our research strategy is therefore different we study a case of non violent relations between resource users under conditions of environmental scarcity due to drought and political instability and look into the crucial role of local institutions in governing competing resource claims our case from the violence prone somali region ethiopia analyses how agro pastor

small and medium sized enterprise financing and securitization firm level evidence from the euro area this paper analyzes the impact of securitization on access to finance for small and medium sized enterprises smes in the euro area using firm level survey data on sme financing conditions we show that an increase in securitization issuance reduces the probability of smes facing credit constraints and decreases the costs of bank financing for nonconstrained firms our results reveal that in addition to the volume of securitization its type and quality matter for credit extension to smes the paper thus provides empirical support for recent initiatives to revive securitization in europe and for effective monetary policy transmission in the euro area jel d22 e44 e51 e58 g21

capitals and capabilities a framework for analyzing peasant viability rural livelihoods and poverty abstract on the basis of themes emerging in current debates on rural development in latin america this paper develops an analytical framework for analyzing rural livelihoods in terms of their sustainability and their implications for rural poverty the framework argues that our analyses of rural livelihoods need to understand them in terms of a people s access to five types of capital asset b the ways in which they combine and transform those assets in the building of livelihoods that as far as possible meet their material and their experiential needs c the ways in which people are able to expand their asset bases through engaging with other actors through relationships governed by the logics of the state market and civil society and d the ways in which they are able to deploy and enhance their capabilities both to make living more meaningful and to change the dominant rules and relationships governing the ways in which resources are controlled distributed and transformed in society particular attention is paid to the importance of social capital as an asset through which people are able to widen their access to resources and other actors

why european banks are less profitable than u s banks a decomposition approach abstract the low profitability of european banks relative to their u s counterparts has recently raised concerns among policy makers and researchers this paper attempts to shed light on this issue by using the o donnell 2012 decomposition approach this approach enables us to decompose the relative profitability of european banks into an output input price index and a total factor productivity index with the former further decomposed into two price indexes and the latter further into four productivity and efficiency measures our results show that european banks profitability was not only weak but also deteriorated over time our further analysis shows that the decline in the output input price index was due to declines in relative lending rate and relative return on securities and an increase in funding costs while the decline in the productivity index was driven by declines in technical efficiency scale efficiency and residual mix efficiency

making land rights accessible social movements and political legal innovation in the rural philippines abstract in recent years rule of law and legal reform has grown to be a major concern of national governments international financial institutions development agencies and donor organisations part of this concern has focused on expanding access to justice for the poor however little effort has gone into understanding the role of justice sector institutions in shaping the opportunities and limits of redistributive justice little attention has been paid to the actual workings of obstacles entrenched within the justice sector to land reform for example instead pro market scholars cite difficult legal problems as a reason to turn away from state led land reform and toward market oriented land policies yet as this paper shows a closer look at the details of dynamics around land reform in the philippines suggests that political legal problems associated with implementation of the agrarian reform law can be overcome under certain conditions it is argued that for rural poor claimants it is important

corporate debt structure and economic recoveries abstract this paper analyzes the business cycle behavior of the corporate debt structure and its interaction with economic recovery the debt structure is measured as the share of bonds in the total credit to non financial corporations for a quarterly panel of countries over the period 1989 2013 we first show that the substitution of loans for bonds in recoveries is a regular property of business cycles secondly we provide evidence that economies with high bond share and important bond loan substitution recover from the recessions faster this identified link between corporate debt structure and business cycles is robust to the inclusion of traditional factors which shape recessions and recovery such as the size and the quality of financial markets the occurrence of bank crisis the dynamics of credit and the distribution of firm size

institutional resource regimes towards sustainability through the combination of property rights theory and policy analysis abstract although the concept of sustainable development is gaining increasing political acknowledgement despite the implementation of environmental policies specifically intended to solve problems in this area environmental degradation resulting from the recurrent problems associated with the over exploitation of natural resources remains an important concern for most countries how can this situation be explained this article postulates that a combination of approaches from the political sciences in particular policy analysis and institutional economics would enable the identification of the most relevant regulatory dimensions which can explain the un sustainable uses of resources based on this starting point it develops an innovative theoretical framework i e that of the institutional resource regime irr the adopted approach facilitates the analysis of the regulatory measures and resource management practices associated with complex and competitive heterogeneous use situations from a perspective of sustainability indeed the two dimensions of extent and coherence enable the definition and categorization of the irr of a given resource the extent of an irr refers to the total number of goods and services in use that are actually regulated by the regime at a given time while the coherence measures the degree of coordination of the various user actors within the regime one of the major contributions of the irr framework is its ability to describe the different configurations of regimes both theoretically and empirically and to predict their effect on the sustainability of a resource based on the hypothesis that high levels of regime extent and coherence are necessary preconditions for sustainability by doing this the irr framework also enables the analysis of the actual use rights to the goods and services provided by resources as the result of the political strategies of actors who mobilize different legal provisions which stem either from formal property rights to resources or from policies that regulate the use and protection of these resources having developed the central research hypotheses and the empirical research procedure we present the lessons drawn from the first campaign of field research which was mainly conducted in switzerland from 1999 based on the evidence from these initial findings it is suggested that the scope of the irr framework could be far broader than evidenced by its application in the case of switzerland where it was initially developed

swimming upstream local indonesian production networks in globalized palm oil production summary when agricultural commodities in developing countries experience an economic boom they offer potential pathways out of poverty while creating environmental and social problems while recent research provides insights into the governance of international supply chains it provides less analysis of the local production networks creating critical problems indonesia is now the world s largest exporter of crude palm oil this paper analyses processes of oil palm development in three oil palm districts it considers how policy models regime interests and agribusiness strategies shape local production networks generate local outcomes and affect the possibilities of tackling issues associated with this boom

entitlements availability and famine a revisionist view of wollo 1972 1974 abstract this article reviews two stylized theories of famine causation food availability decline fad and food entitlement decline fed as competing explanations of the famine of 1972 1974 in wollo province ethiopia a sen s market entitlement failure argument is challenged by j seaman and j holt s price ripple hypothesis a consideration of the role of transactions costs and wealth inequalities suggests a synthesized approach wollo 1972 1974 was a fad supply slump famine for the relatively wealthy and an entitlements collapse demand slump famine for the absolutely poor

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

can equity volatility explain the global loan pricing puzzle we examine whether equity volatility can explain the difference in syndicated corporate loan spreads paid by u s and european borrowers first documented by carey and nini 2007 we argue that ols estimates of the association between equity volatility and loan spreads are biased and inconsistent we suggest instrumental variables that potentially identify consistent estimates our instrumental variable results indicate that there is no statistically significant difference in loan spreads paid by u s and european borrowers and that ols estimates of the association between idiosyncratic equity volatility and corporate loan spreads are biased downward by about a factor of 5

nonlinear pricing advertising and welfare advertising is generally provided by firms with market power that stand to gain from increased demand informative advertising has the characteristics of a public good and is usually provided by firms free of charge thus the monopoly power of firms and the public good nature of advertising may cause departures from the socially optimal level of advertising in this paper the social welfare consequences of advertising supplied by a nonlinear pricing monopolist are examined it is shown that price discrimination on the basis of quantity purchased may lessen the monopoly and public good distortions in the supply of advertsing given information about the distribution of consumer characteristics a monopolist may price discriminate through quantity dependent prices if advertising is complementary to the firm s product it will increase each consumer s marginal willingness to pay the share of each consumer s surplus captured by nonlinear pricing will affect the amount of advertising provided in turn the level of advertising will affect the firm s nonlinear price schedule

financial frictions and employment during the great depression abstract we provide new evidence that a disruption in credit supply played a quantitatively significant role in the unprecedented contraction of employment during the great depression using a novel hand collected dataset of large industrial firms our identification strategy exploits preexisting variation in the need to raise external funds at a time when public bond markets essentially froze local bank failures inhibited firms ability to substitute public debt for private debt which exacerbated financial constraints we estimate a large and negative causal effect of financing frictions on firm employment we find that the lack of access to credit likely accounted for a substantial fraction of the aggregate decline in employment of large firms between 1928 and 1933

got rejected real effects of not getting a loan using a lender cutoff rule that generates plausibly exogenous variation in credit supply i investigate a new channel through which funding shocks are transmitted to the real economy based on a sample of more than 15 000 loan applications from small and medium sized enterprises i find that precautionary savings motives can aggravate real effects low liquidity firms whose loan applications were rejected increase cash holdings and cut noncash assets in excess of the requested loan amount these results point to the amplifying effect of precautionary savings motives in the transmission of credit supply shocks received december 11 2016 editorial decision february 22 2018 by editor philip strahan

heterogeneity and collective management evidence from common forests in himachal pradesh india summary this paper conducts a statistical investigation into the impact of differences in economic benefits wealth and social classes within the community on collective management of forests there are two key results first social parochialism is not a pre requisite for collective management of forests moderate levels of social diversity are associated with low collective management but at high levels of social diversity collective management is high second moderate wealth heterogeneity is beneficial however at high levels and in the presence of benefit heterogeneity it decreases collective management similarly benefit heterogeneity reduces collective management if wealth heterogeneity also exists these results run counter to the dominant understanding of heterogeneity but may be seen as alternate explanations under a specific socioeconomic context

poverty and famines an essay on entitlement and deprivation this book focuses on the causes of starvation in general and famines in particular the traditional analysis of famines is shown to be fundamentally defective and the author develops an alternative analysis

cyclicality of credit supply firm level evidence abstract we quantify fluctuations in bank loan supply in the time series by studying firms substitution between loans and bonds using firm level data any firm that raises new debt must have a positive demand for external funds conditional on the issuance of new debt we interpret firms switching from loans to bonds as a contraction in bank credit supply we find strong evidence of this substitution at times that are characterized by tight lending standards depressed aggregate lending poor bank performance and tight monetary policy we show that this substitution behavior has strong predictive power for bank borrowing and investments by small firms

water and human development summary the article argues for a human development approach to the water crisis it explores the application of the entitlements approach ea and capabilities approach ca to water ea goes beyond volumetric or per capita measurements of water scarcity and directs attention to the structural and institutional issues concerning water inequalities ca focuses on links between water and wellbeing both strengthen the case for the human right to water and break down false distinctions between water for domestic and productive purposes despite challenges with operationalizing ca and ea a human development approach to water helps question the sector s traditional focus on utilitarianism and efficiency it also directs attention to equity and to the needs and interests of the marginalized and excluded

wildlife conservation in zambia impacts on rural household welfare summary we investigate the impact of wildlife conservation policies in zambia on household welfare in game management areas gmas which are buffer zones around national parks analysis of data from a nationwide survey of rural households shows that gmas are positively associated with household income and crop damage from wildlife conflicts gains and damages were greatest among households in gmas with greater wildlife diversity with net gains relatively greater for wealthier households households in prime well stocked gmas were more likely to participate in off farm wage and self employment compared to other rural households but they were also more likely to suffer crop losses related to wildlife conflicts the findings suggest that wildlife conservation and tourism development can contribute to pro poor development but may be sustainable only if human wildlife conflicts are minimized or compensated

bank capital and lending relationships this paper investigates the mechanisms behind the matching of banks and firms in the loan market and the implications of this matching for lending relationships bank capital and the provision of credit i find that bank dependent firms borrow from well capitalized banks while firms with access to the bond market borrow from banks with less capital this matching of bank dependent firms with stable banks smooths cyclicality in aggregate credit provision and mitigates the effects of bank shocks on the real economy

do smes benefit from unconventional monetary policy and how microevidence from the eurozone we study the impact of the announcement of the european central bank s ecb s outright monetary transactions program on small firms access to finance using a matched firm bank data set from eight eurozone countries we find that following the announcement credit access improved relatively more for firms borrowing from banks with high balance sheet exposures to impaired sovereign debt with such firms less likely to be refused a loan or to be price rationed loan terms also improved as manifested by lengthening of loan maturities unconventional monetary policy has a positive impact on firms investment and profitability while its effect on firm innovation is weaker

environmental entitlements dynamics and institutions in community based natural resource management abstract while community based natural resource management cbnrm now attracts widespread international attention its practical implementation frequently falls short of expectations this paper contributes to emerging critiques by focusing on the implications of intracommunity dynamics and ecological heterogeneity it builds a conceptual framework highlighting the central role of institutions regularized patterns of behavior between individuals and groups in society in mediating environment society relationships grounded in an extended form of entitlements analysis the framework explores how differently positioned social actors command environmental goods and services that are instrumental to their well being further insights are drawn from analyses of social difference new dynamic ecology new institutional economics structuration theory and landscape history the theoretical argument is illustrated with case material from india south africa and ghana

did financial frictions stifle r d investment in europe during the great recession abstract we investigate the role of financial frictions in r d spending in a large sample of european firms our identification strategy exploits the contraction in credit supply that followed the 2008 09 global financial crisis and 2012 euro area sovereign debt crisis together with differences in financial frictions across firms and industries to identify a causal effect of financial constraints on investment in innovation we show that firms that are more likely financially constrained in industries more dependent on external finance invest disproportionally less in r d during periods of tight credit supply smaller private firms with weaker balance sheets also have a lower share of r d in total investment suggesting r d drops more than total investment during these crisis episodes these results are robust to different proxies of financial constraints and fixed effects identification strategies

business loans and the transmission of monetary policy we study the transmission mechanism of monetary policy through business loans and illustrate subtle aspects of its functioning that relate to the contractual characteristics and the borrower lender types of loans we show that the puzzling increase in business loans in response to monetary tightening documented before the great recession is largely driven by drawdowns from existing commitments at large banks spot loans also rise and take a considerable amount of time to adjust banks nonetheless do curtail credit supply by shortening maturities of new loans following the great recession the mechanism has worked differently with loan responses to monetary tightening displaying a significant downward shift

optimal debt structure and the number of creditors within an optimal contracting framework we analyze the optimal number of creditors a company borrows from we also analyze the optimal allocation of security interests among creditors and intercreditor voting rules that govern renegotiation of debt contracts the key to our analysis is the idea that these aspects of the debt structure affect the outcome of debt renegotiation following a default debt structures that lead to inefficient renegotiation are beneficial in that they deter default but they are also costly if default is beyond a manager s control the optimal debt structure balances these effects we characterize how the optimal debt structure depends on firm characteristics such as its technology its credit rating and the market for its assets

common property and collective action in economic development abstract a fundamental issue in many ldcs is the degree to which natural resource mismanagement is caused by common property arrangements this view has led to widespread attempts to privatize forests rangelands and water resources many of these efforts have failed to stop overuse and have contributed to inequality in resource distribution this paper seriously questions this approach and describes a number of reasons why common property may continue to be both efficient and equitable complementing and combining with private rights in a way consistent with the resource endowments of village economies a theoretical approach is outlined showing that the tragedy of the commons is an unsatisfactory model of common property an alternative model is presented together with a call for research into institutional alternatives in resource management

bank bias in europe effects on systemic risk and growth europe s financial structure has become strongly bank based far more so than in other economies we document that an increase in the size of the banking system relative to equity and private bond markets is associated with more systemic risk and lower economic growth particularly during housing market crises we argue that these two phenomena arise owing to an amplification mechanism by which banks overextend and misallocate credit when asset prices rise and ration it when they drop the paper concludes by discussing policy solutions to europe s bank bias which include reducing regulatory favouritism towards banks while simultaneously supporting the development of securities markets

the employment effects of credit market disruptions firm level evidence from the 2008 9 financial crisis this article investigates the effect of bank lending frictions on employment outcomes i construct a new data set that combines information on banking relationships and employment at 2 000 nonfinancial firms during the 2008 9 crisis the article first verifies empirically the importance of banking relationships which imply a cost to borrowers who switch lenders i then use the dispersion in lender health following the lehman crisis as a source of exogenous variation in the availability of credit to borrowers i find that credit matters firms that had precrisis relationships with less healthy lenders had a lower likelihood of obtaining a loan following the lehman bankruptcy paid a higher interest rate if they did borrow and reduced employment by more compared to precrisis clients of healthier lenders consistent with frictions deriving from asymmetric information the effects vary by firm type lender health has an economically and statistically significant effect on employment at small and medium firms but the data cannot reject the hypothesis of no effect at the largest or most transparent firms abstracting from general equilibrium effects i find that the withdrawal of credit accounts for between one third and one half of the employment decline at small and medium firms in the sample in the year

are banks really special new evidence from the fdic induced failure of healthy banks the fdic used cross guarantees in order to close 38 subsidiaries of first republicbank corporation in 1988 and 18 subsidiaries of first city bankcorporation in 1992 when lead banks from each of these texas based bank holding companies were declared insolvent i use this plausibly exogenous failure of otherwise healthy subsidiary banks as a natural experiment in order to study the impact of bank failure on local area real economic activity the resolution of these institutions was associated with a significant decline in failed bank lending that led to a permanent reduction in real county income of about 3 percent jel codes e5 g18 g33 keywords bank failures cross guarantee uniqueness of banks

when fishery rhymes with poverty a first step beyond the old paradigm on poverty in small scale fisheries abstract in this paper we first look retrospectively at the perceptions embraced by academics international agencies and practitioners of the relation between fisheries and poverty in developing countries and we try to identify the underlying paradigms which have structured these perceptions the review reveals how the debate has focused on the economic low income and biological overexploitation aspects of the problem we then revisit these perceptions in the light of the recent conclusions drawn from other sectors and in particular from the new consensus on poverty proposed by the international community incorporation of the recent research on poverty helps to show how socio institutional mechanisms governing people s access to fisheries resources rather than the resources themselves play such a critical role in vulnerability to poverty finally a typology identifying four different categories of intrasectoral exclusion mechanisms is developed and illustrated through empirical studies derived from african and asian fisheries

seniority and monopsony in the academic labor market workers with high seniority usually have higher wages than workers with low seniority and the same total labor marke t experience in contrast the results of this paper indicate that higher seniority is associated with lower salaries for university professors the author documents this finding for national surveys a nd individual institutions and explains it as due to monopsonistic discrimination by employers copyright 1993 by american economic association

equity reexamined a study of community based rainwater harvesting in rajasthan india summary equity is central to community based development efforts but community perspectives on equity are seldom examined in the development literature this study investigates how equity in a rainwater harvesting program is understood and practiced in two rajasthani communities drawing on bourdieu s concept of symbolic capital we find that the symbolic capital accrued from contributing to the project is as central to community understandings of equity as the distribution of benefits from the project we find that a continuing sense of community despite heterogeneity is itself a form of symbolic capital community based valuations of equity thus enable a more catholic approach to costs and benefits that broadens our knowledge both of equity and of development

understanding poverty in cash crop agro forestry systems evidence from ghana and ethiopia this paper examines the linkages between cash crop income and other dimensions of poverty to interrogate assumptions regarding the relationship between agricultural income and poverty alleviation the analysis treats poverty as a multi dimensional and socially disaggregated phenomenon the paper employs a mixed methods approach to case studies of ghana and ethiopia to explore two critical issues first how income from cash crops is linked with other dimensions of poverty second how income and land are socially disaggregated the paper then draws on qualitative data to critically reflect on how poverty is understood within studied communities the results show that some but not all indicators of poverty vary across income quartiles and that significant differences exist across social groups the analysis suggests that although cash crops are essential focusing on increasing income from cash crops will not necessarily have a predictable or progressive impact on wellbeing furthermore the analysis highlights how contextual factors such as the provision of communal services the nature of land holdings and the quality of local governance mediate the potential poverty alleviating outcomes of income increases future development of sustainable intensification strategies should focus on the prevalence of trade offs and the fundamental social relations underpinning poverty dynamics

the source of fluctuations in money evidence from trade credit abstract this paper tests the relative importance of technology shocks and financial shocks as sources of fluctuations in money the model extends the theory of king and plosser 1984 by recognizing that both money and trade credit provide transactions services under certain conditions the co movements between money and trade credit can reveal the nature of the underlying shocks the empirical results strongly suggest that shocks to the financial system account for most of the fluctuations in money in the long run and at business cycle frequencies on the other hand technology shocks appear to be more important at seasonal frequencies

credit reallocation deleveraging and financial crises this paper studies how the process of reallocation of credit across firms behaves before and after financial crises applying the methodology typically used for measuring job reallocation we track credit reallocation across korean firms for over three decades 1980 2012 the credit boom preceding the 1997 crisis featured a slowdown of credit reallocation after the crisis and the associated reforms the creditless recovery deleveraging masked a dramatic intensification and increased procyclicality of credit reallocation the findings suggest that the intensification of reallocation was efficiency enhancing

equity bonds and bank debt capital structure and financial market equilibrium under asymmetric information this paper proposes a model of financial markets and corporate finance with asymmetric information and no taxes where equity issues bank debt and bond financing coexist in equilibrium the relationship banking aspect of financial intermediation is emphasized firms turn to banks as a source of investment mainly because banks are good at helping them through times of financial distress this financial flexibility is costly since banks face costs of capital themselves which they attempt to minimize through securitization to avoid this intermediation cost firms may turn to bond or equity financing but bonds imply an inefficient liquidation cost and equity an informational dilution cost we show that in equilib rium the riskier firms prefer bank loans the safer ones tap the bond markets and the ones in between prefer to issue both equity and bonds this segmentation is broadly consistent with stylized facts

collateral and the choice between bank debt and public debt this paper tests how collateral value affects a firm s choice between bank debt and public debt by considering the exogenous variation in the market value of a firm s real estate assets caused by fluctuations in local real estate prices using local land supply elasticities as an instrument for local real estate prices i estimate that a one standard deviation increase in collateral value causes bank debt as a fraction of total debt to increase by six percentage points this paper was accepted by wei jiang finance

the macroeconomics of shadow banking we propose a dynamic macroeconomic model of nancial intermediation in an environment where households demand liquid assets in contrast to the literature intermediaries can issue equity without any friction in normal times intermediaries maximize liquidity creation by levering up the collateral value of their assets a process we call shadow banking a rise in uncertainty causes investors to demand liquidity in bad states intermediaries respond by simultaneously deleveraging and substituting toward safe liabilities shadow banking eectively shuts down prices fall and investment plummets the model generates amplication via endogenous collateral runs as well as ight to quality eects the model s macroeconomic eects are consistent with a slow economic recovery even when and especially when intermediary capital is high we analyze the impact of several policy interventions in the areas of unconventional monetary policy and regulatory reform

explaining and forecasting bank loans good times and crisis abstractthis article aims to develop a parsimonious model to explain and forecast bank loans to nonfinancial companies during calm periods as well as in situations of financial turmoil it focuses on the french context over a period including financial banking and sovereign debt crises theoretical views and intuitions led us to gauge the marginal informational content of a large set of leading indicators in var and vecm models and to investigate potential nonlinearity in credit dynamics in accordance with firms and banks balance sheet effects the growth rate of equity prices appears to be one of the most interesting leading indicator as well as a significant threshold variable for explaining regime switching however it appears difficult to accurately predict the right credit dynamics regimes a simple var model finally performs better

the revenge of homo economicus contested exchange and the revival of political economy recent developments in microeconomic theory have shown that the self interested behavior underlying neoclassical theory is artificially truncated it depicts a charmingly victorian but utopian world in which conflicts abound but a handshake is a handshake but a handshake is not always a handshake studies of principal agent analysis the economics of information radical political economy mechanism design and transactions cost economics have all focused on the difficulties involved in policing and enforcing the actual process of market exchange abandoning the victorian world of neoclassical theory will redirect economists to an older conception of their profession what once was called political economy by taking optimizing more seriously post walrasian economics has inspired a revolution in economic thought fostering both new theoretical departures and alternative conceptions of the capitalist economy we will offer our own interpretation of this literature focusing on the widely recognized fact that the terms arising from exchange are not generally enforceable at zero cost to the exchanging parties where some aspect of the good or service supplied is both valuable to the buyer and costly to provide the absence of third party enforcement of claims gives rise to endogenous enforcement strategies we refer to this relationship as a contested exchange because unlike the transactions of walrasian economics the benefit the parties derive from the transaction depends on their own capacities to enforce competing claims

institutions and the environment the case for a political socio economy of environmental conflicts this article presents a sympathetic but critical examination of institutional ecological economics iee a heterodox body of work on environmental governance as developed separately by j paavola and a vatn we highlight the theoretical limitations of iee related to two issues the causes of the emergence of environmental conflicts and the logics driving their regulation these limitations are all related to the underlying theories of institutional change in which power and legitimacy based explanations are confusedly combined both authors develop a normative perspective in which legitimacy becomes the main concern we argue that this perspective leads to contradictions in their respective approaches and provides no or only partial insights into the conditions of the emergence and regulation of environmental conflicts we finally highlight the conceptual adjustments inspired from classical marxism and regulation theory that in our view are needed to deal more adequately with these issues

does the source of capital affect capital structure prior work on leverage implicitly assumes capital availability depends solely on firm characteristics however market frictions that make capital structure relevant may also be associated with a firm s source of capital examining this intuition we find firms that have access to the public bond markets as measured by having a debt rating have significantly more leverage although firms with a rating are fundamentally different these differences do not explain our findings even after controlling for firm characteristics that determine observed capital structure and instrumenting for the possible endogeneity of having a rating firms with access have 35 more debt copyright 2006 oxford university press

identifying the risk taking channel of monetary transmission and the connection to economic activity abstract i use loan level data from the syndicated loan market in the u s to investigate how monetary policy affects banks sensitivity to risk using loan level data and banks sensitivity to risk enables me to identify the risk taking channel and disentangle it from other monetary channels i show that banks change their behavior toward risk following changes in monetary policy where loose monetary policy reduces banks sensitivity to risk i then provide evidence for the significant contribution of risk taking shocks and changes in banks risk taking behavior to economic outcomes and business cycle fluctuations the paper s primary contribution is in providing new loan level evidence for the existence of the risk taking channel in the u s as well as a possible link between the risk taking channel and business cycle fluctuations

can smallholders engage in tree plantations an entitlements analysis from vietnam tree plantations have expanded rapidly at the global scale this paper examines the possibilities for smallholders to engage in plantations as a potential means for poverty alleviation the paper analyzes the possibilities through an empirical study of household tree growing in rural vietnam with a focus on differences in the capacities of households to gain land endowments and translate endowments into tree entitlements employing heckman regression models and qualitative institutional analyses the paper finds that better off households are more likely to possess forestland grow trees and invest in plantations than poor ones in addition land plantations and investment tend to be larger for the better off than the poor better off households are in a better position to engage in tree plantations due to among other factors the institutional mechanisms differentiating household access to land and finance

corporate debt structure and the financial crisis we present a dsge model where rms optimally choose among alternative instruments of external nance the model is used to explain the evolving composition of corporate debt during the nancial crisis of 2007 09 namely the observed shift from bank nance to bond nance despite the increasing cost of debt securities relative to bank loans we show that substitutability among instruments of external nance is important to shield the

a discrete choice model for large heterogeneous panels with interactive fixed effects with an application to the determinants of corporate bond issuance a discrete choice model for large heterogeneous panels with interactive fixed effects with an application to the determinants of corporate bond issuan