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

demand for home modifications a household production function approach coping with activity limitations that occur in old age is an important issue in the context of increasing life expectancy and the still inevitable onset of chronic conditions in old age elderly households can be viewed as coping with activity limitations by producing functionality with the use of direct inputs that include home modifications a model of the household production of functionality is developed within the general framework of household production function models of health hypotheses generated from this model are tested using a logit model for data from the survey of asset and health dynamics among the oldest old ahead the main findings of the empirical analysis are that the demand for home modifications is fairly income inelastic home modifications and personal care are substitutes to some degree the demand for home modifications increases with years of schooling and that particular health conditions and the use of other assistive devices are important determinants of the demand for

income diversification and risk does ownership matter an empirical examination of indian banks abstract we examine the impact of ownership on income diversification and risk for indian banks over the period 2001 2009 we investigate both the determinants of non interest income and the impact of diversification on various profitability and insolvency risk measures for public sector private domestic and foreign banks we document that ownership does matter in the pursuit of non interest income relative to private domestic banks public sector banks earn significantly less fee income while foreign banks report higher fee income public sector banks with higher levels of governmental ownership are significantly less likely to pursue non interest income sources fee based income significantly reduces risk measured by profitability variables for public sector banks default risk is also reduced for these banks from a regulatory perspective it appears that diversification benefits india s public sector banks our research has implications for the changes in the risk profile for banks in emerging banking markets pursuing non interest revenue sources

theories of bank behavior under capital regulation abstract this paper reviews academic studies of bank capital regulation in an effort to evaluate the intellectual foundation for the imposition of the basel i and basel ii systems of risk based capital requirements the theoretical literature yields general agreement about the immediate effects of capital requirements on bank lending and loan rates and the longer term impacts on bank ratios of equity to total or risk adjusted assets this literature produces highly mixed predictions however regarding the effects of capital regulation on asset risk and overall safety and soundness for the banking system as a whole thus the intellectual foundation for the present capital regulation regime is not particularly strong the mixed conclusions in the academic literature on banking certainly do not provide unqualified support for moving to an even more stringent and costly system of capital requirements these widely ambiguous results do suggest however that assessing the implications of capital regulation for balance sheet risk and monitoring effort in diverse banking systems is an important agenda for future theoretical research in the banking area

bank risk within and across equilibria abstract the global financial crisis highlighted that the financial system can be most vulnerable when it seems most stable this paper models non linear dynamics in banking small shocks can lead from an equilibrium with few bank defaults straight to a full freeze the mechanism is based on amplification between adverse selection on banks funding market and moral hazard in bank monitoring our results imply trade offs between regulators microprudential desire to shield individual weak banks and the macroprudential consequences of doing so moreover limiting bank reliance on wholesale funding always reduces systemic risk but limiting the correlation between bank portfolios does not

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

dynamic factor models with macro frailty and industry effects for u s default counts the credit crisis of 2008 we develop a high dimensional nonlinear and non gaussian dynamic factor model for the decomposition of systematic default risk conditions into latent components for 1 macroeconomic financial risk 2 autonomous default dynamics frailty and 3 industry specific effects we analyze discrete u s corporate default counts together with macroeconomic and financial variables in one unifying framework we find that approximately 35 of default rate variation is due to systematic and industry factors approximately one third of this systematic variation is captured by the macroeconomic and financial factors the remainder is captured by frailty 40 and industry 25 effects the default specific effects are particularly relevant before and during times of financial turbulence we detect a build up of systematic risk over the period preceding the 2008 credit crisis this article has online supplementary material

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

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

the scope for poverty alleviation among elderly home owners in the united states through reverse mortgages this paper investigates the scope for alleviating poverty among elderly home owners in the us by means of reverse mortgages a reverse mortgage is a loan secured against the home equity owned by the borrower this loan does not require monthly repayment and the elderly borrower is allowed to use the home as a principal residence for as long as she wishes we compute monthly payments that can be obtained by elderly home owners under a reverse mortgage by simulating the tenure plan of the home equity conversion mortgage hecm reverse mortgage product which is sponsored by the us department of housing and urban development this study utilises data from the national file of the american housing survey of 1991 we estimate that 621 820 elderly home owners in poverty could be raised above the poverty line if they obtained a reverse mortgage under the hecm tenure plan these households constitute 29 per cent of all poor elderly home owners there appears to be considerable scope for alleviating poverty among e

schooling and seat belt use in the health production literature schooling has distinguished itself as the most important correlate of good health according to fuchs 11 economists have been so persuasive in their demonstration of the importance of schooling that medical researchers are increasingly drawing attention to lack of schooling as a risk factor in a variety of diseases 24 while there is little doubt among health economists about the empirical strength of the relation between schooling and health there is considerable controversy surrounding explanations for the empirical association grossman 15 16 maintains that schooling directly enhances health for example by increasing knowledge pertaining to healthy habits fuchs 11 12 on the other hand maintains that schooling serves as an empirical proxy for some unobserved third variable which also happens to be associated with health the third variable most frequently mentioned is time preference fuchs rejects the grossman idea that education plays a direct role in promoting health the debate has relevance for policy if schooling promotes health it could be argued that expenditures on schooling could be compared to for example expenditures on medical care as an alternative for increasing average life spans but if fuchs is right any expenditure comparisons would be futile

health behavior health knowledge and schooling the positive correlation between schooling and good health is well documented one explanation is that schooling helps people choose healthier life styles by improving their knowledge of the relationship between health behaviors and health outcomes that is schooling improves the household s allocative efficiency in producing health this empirical study uses direct measures of health knowledge to test this explanation part of the relationship between schooling and the consumption of cigarettes alcohol and exercise is explained by differences in health knowledge however most of schooling s effects on health behavior remain after differences in knowledge are controlled for

risk shifting incentives of depository institutions a new perspective on federal deposit insurance reform abstract we characterize the risk shifting incentives of a depository institution as arising fundamentally from the existence of limited liability and the associated convex payoff to equity holders this risk incentive feature is unchanged by deposits being insured and hence excessive risk taking by depository institutions is not solely attributable to the flat rate insurance premium consequently the incentive problem cannot be resolved through a risk based insurance premium contrary to the prevailing view we propose a solution that eliminates risk shifting through an optimal tax structure and specify a corresponding insurance premium that is revenue neutral from the social planner s regulator s standpoint the solution is derived in the context of a social objective function that trades off the benefits of liquidity services by banks and the unique informational role of bank loans with the costs of investment distortions engendered by risk shifting

size and performance of banking firms testing the predictions of theory abstract in recent years two important literatures on the theory of banking firms have developed one examines the economic functions of banks in environments in which agents are asymmetrically informed another considers the incentive effects moral hazard resulting from deposit insurance both theories make predictions about the relation between banking firm size and performance an empirical analysis of large bank holding companies investigates measures of market valuation and risk of failure limited support is provided for either set of theoretical predictions

derivatives regulation implications for central banks abstract we review aspects of derivatives markets that affect central bank operations we focus on how derivatives affect monetary policy and bank supervision and argue that derivatives have no material adverse impact on the conduct of monetary policy our analysis suggests that both derivatives users and dealers face relatively small default risks from derivatives systemic risk the risk of widespread default has been largely exaggerated policy debates have neglected incentives of employees the nature of this agency risk suggests that internal controls are more likely to reduce these problems than derivatives regulation

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

heterogeneity in bank valuation of ldc debt evidence from the 1988 brazilian debt reduction program abstract using data on bank choices in the 1988 brazilian debt reduction deal we confirm predictable heterogeneity in bank valuation of brazilian claims in the presence of a functioning secondary market for ldc debt the source of this heterogeneity is unclear we introduce a model in which regulatory concerns influence bank choice bank choices in debt reduction programs are aimed at maximizing the magnitude of their transfer from regulatory agencies as a result bank choices reflect their characteristics including financial strength and exposure to the debtor country the directions of influence correspond to the predictions of our model

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

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

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

a dynamic model of landlord reinvestment behavior abstract in this paper we develop a dynamic model of a landlord s decision to invest in the maintenance and rehabilitation of housing the model incorporates the intertemporal nature of the problem uncertainty the role of future expectations the extreme durability of housing and the notion of adjustment costs this model is an application of t j sargent s macroeconomic theory academic press orlando 1987 infinite horizon model of investment under uncertainty to housing reinvestment intertemporality and convex adjustment costs in the model lead to the result of a reinvestment path being optimal rather than a single time reinvestment effort even if depreciation did not occur periodically two versions of the model are developed 1 under perfect competition and 2 under non perfect competition both models are solved analytically and yield explicit solutions the solutions show the relationship between the optimal path of reinvestment and current and expected future rental prices expenditures of the landlord related to the level of housing services such as property taxes cost of maintenance and the adjustment cost factor the model suggests that the objective of good quality housing is better served by a smooth path of reinvestment rather than aby a sporadic path that involves bulky adjustments this paper discusses situations in the context of the model in which deterioration upgrading maintaining at a constant quality demolition and abandonment of housing may be optimal the contributions of this paper are the incorporation of intertemporality adjustment costs endogeneity of the life of a dwelling extreme durability of housing and uncertainty in a model of landlord reinvestment behavior that yields explicit solutions to the optimal path of maintenance

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

do capital adequacy requirements reduce risks in banking abstract in a dynamic framework it is shown that capital adequacy rules may increase a bank s riskiness in addition to the standard negative effect of rents on risk attitudes of banks a further intertemporal effect has to be considered the intuition behind the result is that under binding capital requirements an additional unit of equity tomorrow is more valuable to a bank if raising equity is excessively costly the only possibility to increase equity tomorrow is to increase risk today

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

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

the production of functionality by the elderly a household production function approach this paper extends becker s model of the household production function of human capital to the production of elderly functionality in this model elderly functionality is produced with the direct inputs of assistive devices personal assistance and nutritional intake education endowment variables like genetic endowment and sex and health conditions like stroke determine the production function environment data from the survey of asset and health dynamics among the oldest old ahead are used to estimate a production function of bathing functionality using a two stage estimation procedure in the first stage input demands for the endogenous functionality inputs are estimated recognizing health heterogeneity the results suggest that reverses in functionality caused by age and health conditions can be partially compensated for by the use of assistive devices like grab bars and bathing equipment secure nutritional intake and moderate alcohol consumption however non inputs like chronic healt

capital regulation and deposit insurance abstract a model of deposit insurance in which the bank closure rule can systematically deviate from the economic insolvency condition used in earlier models is developed simulation of that model for plausible parameter values suggests that the failure to close banks on a timely basis has a profound effect in increasing the insurer s liability the implications of these results for capital regulation are discussed

evidence of bank market discipline in subordinated debenture yields 1983 1991 we examine debenture yields over the period 1983 1991 to evaluate the market s sensitivity to bank specific risks and conclude that investors have rationally reflected changes in the government s policy toward absorbing private losses in the event of a bank failure although this evidence does not establish that market discipline can effectively control banking firms it soundly rejects the hypothesis that investors cannot rationally differentiate among the risks undertaken by the major u s banking firms an increasingly important issue in the regulation of financial institutions concerns the extent to which market investors can will recognize and control the risks of banking firms although the banking act of 1933 replaced some private risk bearing with federal deposit insurance legislators were reluctant to displace market discipline very extensively flood 1992 by the early 1980s however u s regulators had come to protect virtually all bank liability holders from credit losses most visibly at large banks which were deemed too big to fail sprague 1986 o hara and shaw 1990 this extension of the government safety net largely reflects a skepticism on the part of regulators that normal market forces could adequately identify and control bank risks while u s regulators have recently shown an increased willingness to let some bank investors bear default losses an official suspicion of the efficacy of market discipline remains widespread by contrast some prominent academic economists argue that market investors in bank debentures could provide timely and effective control over banking firms risk exposures and that the social cost of supervising banks would be lower if regulators ceded greater

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

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

emerging problems with the basel capital accord regulatory capital arbitrage and related issues in recent years securitization and other financial innovations have provided unprecedented opportunities for banks to reduce substantially their regulatory capital requirements with little or no corresponding reduction in their overall economic risks a process termed regulatory capital arbitrage these methods are used routinely to lower the eaective risk based capital requirements against certain portfolios to levels well below the basel capital accord s nominal 8 total risk based capital standard this paper discusses the principal techniques used to undertake capital arbitrage and the diaculties faced by bank supervisors in attempting to deal with these activities under the current capital framework 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

the effect of lender identity on a borrowing firm s equity return previous research demonstrates that a firm s common stock price tends to fall when it issues new public securities by contrast commercial bank loans elicit significantly positive borrower returns this article investigates whether the lender s identity influences the market s reaction to a loan announcement although we find no significant difference between the market s response to bank and nonbank loans we do find that lenders with a higher credit rating are associated with larger abnormal borrower returns this evidence complements earlier findings that an auditor s or investment banker s perceived quality signals valuable information about firm value to uninformed market investors previous studies show that certain types of loan announcements generate significantly positive abnormal returns to the average borrower s equity 1 this finding contrasts with the negative equity returns generally associated with a corporation s issuance of public securities smith 1986 this difference in market reactions indicates that private and public securities are not perfect substitutes for the average firm in this sense lender identity defined as public versus private lender significantly impacts the borrower s abnormal equity return the standard theoretical explanation for this difference is that private lenders either obtain private information about the firm s value or they have the incentive and ability to monitor firm behavior more effectively than other outside monitors can although the empirical literature on private lending has evaluated primarily commercial bank loans and lines of credit these theoretical arguments apply equally to any type of private

risk in banking and capital regulation this paper investigates the role of bank capital regulation in risk control it is known that banks choose portfolios of higher risk because of inefficiently priced deposit insurance bank capital regulation is a way to redress this bias toward risk utilizing the mean variance model the following results are shown a the use of simple capital ratios in regulation is an ineffective means to bound the insolvency risk of banks b as a solution to problems of the capital ratio regulation the theoretically correct risk weights under the risk based capital plan are explicitly derived and c the theoretically correct risk weights are restrictions on asset composition which alters the optimal portfolio choice of banking firms the recent increase in bank failures especially after the 1980 and 1982 deregulatory acts has again ignited a controversy over the risk portfolio of the banking industry given the importance of this sector there has been increased scrutiny of the industry s motives for risk taking and possible regulatory changes to improve its stability these investigations have centered around two rather complementary areas the first of these is the role of deposit insurance and how its current pricing procedure encourages risk taking and justifies current bank regulations the works of buser chen and kane 4 kane 9 and benston et al 2 have made substantive contributions the authors demonstrates the way in which our current fixed rate insurance system rewards risk taking by the firm and insulates it through deposit insurance from the market discipline that needs to exist to ensure proper risk evaluation this realization has led these authors to propose a series of regulatory changes to encourage proper portfolio choice within the industry these include a shift to market value accounting risk based deposit insurance premiums and additional capital regulation the last of these serves as a method of coinsurance whereby higher capital levels require the bank to absorb greater losses in the event of failure and encourage additional prudence in management in essense it is one method of risk reduction that may offset the risk preference imposed on the industry due to the inappropriate insurance pricing because the amount of capital influences the probability of bank insolvency and thus the soundness of the entire banking system the regulators ceteris paribus prefer more capital to

does corporate lending by banks and finance companies differ evidence on specialization in private debt contracting this paper establishes empirically the existence of specialization in private market corporate lending adding a new dimension to the public versus private debt distinctions now common in the literature comparing corporate loans made by banks and by finance companies we find that the two types of intermediaries are equally likely to finance information problematic firms however finance companies tend to serve observably riskier borrowers particularly more leveraged borrowers evidence supports both regulatory and reputation based explanations for this specialization in passing we shed light on various theories of debt contracting and intermediation and present facts about finance companies

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

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

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

bank capital and equity investment regulations abstract this paper uses an intermediation model to study the efficiency and welfare implications of both banks minimum required capital asset ratio and the regulation that limits and in some countries forbids banks investments in the equity of nonfinancial firms there are two sources of moral hazard in the model one between the bank and the provider of deposit insurance and the other between the bank and an entrepreneur who demands funds to finance an investment project among other things the paper shows that capital regulation improves the bank s stability and can also be pareto improving equity regulation is never pareto improving and does not increase the bank s stability

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

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

the effect of alcohol use on wages 1988 the effect of alcohol use on wages applied economics vol 20 no 10 pp 1343 1351

basel iii leverage ratio requirement and the probability of bank runs abstract a new argument for the basel iii leverage ratio requirement is proposed the need to limit the risk of a bank run when there is imperfect information on the value of a bank s assets in addition to screening and monitoring borrowers banks provide liquidity insurance with the supply of short term deposits withdrawable on demand the maturity mismatch creates the risk of a disorderly bank run which can be exacerbated by imperfect information about the value of bank assets it is shown in a stylized basel iii framework that capital regulation should incorporate a liquidity risk component credit risk diversification and or a reduced probability of loan default which lead to a reduction of basel iii regulatory capital will increase the probability of a bank run the leverage ratio rule puts a floor on the basel iii risk weighted capital ratio allowing the limitation of such a risk

modeling the banking firm a survey this paper reports on the status of the literature on micro bank modeling and assesses our understanding of the banking firm s optimal behavior this is no mean task for much has been written on banking broadly defined over the past couple of decades the review is developed in pieces each major subproblem is outlined and the analysis used to deal with the issue explicated this is not the best way to summarize the development of a field it should be immediately recognized one would prefer to have a smooth continuum of development moving the frontier of knowledge evenly through time and across subareas yet this is rarely the way a field develops more likely individual questions attract attention and are the subjects of a substantial number of contributions after a time the field moves on to the new area of interest the banking field is no exception before embarking upon the review however a couple of lines should be devoted to previous attempts there have been essentially three first pyle 1972 analyzes the uncertainty portfolio models at a time when little existed in the literature and hence one finds the review a bit vague and sketchy baltensperger s contributions 1978 1980 are the next serious and rather extensive reviews the quality of these

credit contagion from counterparty risk standard credit risk models cannot explain the observed clustering of default some times described as credit contagion this paper provides the first empirical analysis of credit contagion via direct counterparty effects we find that bankruptcy announce ments cause negative abnormal equity returns and increases in cds spreads for credi tors in addition creditors with large exposures are more likely to suffer from financial distress later this suggests that counterparty risk is a potential additional channel of credit contagion indeed the fear of counterparty defaults among financial institu tions explains the sudden worsening of the credit crisis after the lehman bankruptcy in september 2008

forecasting bankruptcy more accurately a simple hazard model i argue that hazard models are more appropriate than single period models for forecasting bankruptcy single period models are inconsistent while hazard models produce consistent estimates i describe a simple technique for estimating a discrete time hazard model i find that about half of the accounting ratios that have been used in previous models are not statistically significant moreover market size past stock returns and idiosyncratic returns variability are all strongly related to bankruptcy i propose a model that uses both accounting ratios and market driven variables to produce out of sample forecasts that are more accurate than those of alternative models copyright 2001 by university of chicago press

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

correlated default risks and bank regulations bank regulatory design relies critically on bank risk modeling traditionally the bank s aggregate value is assumed to obey an exogenously specified process e g a lognormal diffusion we demonstrate that this assumption is generally invalid given the truncated and correlated payoff structure of individual bank loans instead the bank s aggregate terminal payoff is significantly left fat tailed this skewness remains even when the bank holds an infinitely large number of loans in its portfolio unless they are uncorrelated by ignoring skewness in bank payoffs deposit insurance premia and capital requirements have traditionally been significantly mis calculated

gender differences in labor market effects of alcoholism little is known about the role of specific health problems in affecting labor market productivity even less is known about gender differences in the labor market effects of such health problems current knowledge of health effects is based largely on samples composed exclusively of men a common practice in both economics and health research in the latter case even a congressional mandate to incorporate females in study samples is reputed to have had little effect patricia schroeder 1990 in this study we attempt to determine the structure of gender differences in labor market responses to alcoholism we use a relatively new data source that allows such comparisons by gender in a large community based sample previous studies have established that there are significant gender differences in labor market behavior differences in prevalence rates of alcoholism by gender are also well established it is estimated that 3 percent of females are currently suffering from alcoholism and twice that many have exhibited symptoms at some time for males the numbers are 10 and 20 percent respectively there is some medical evidence to indicate that physiologically women and men respond differently to alcohol for example a recent study suggests that women have greater vulnerability to the acute and chronic health conditions associated with alcoholism mario frezza et al 1990

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

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

the financial crisis and bank client relationships foreign ownership transparency and portfolio selection abstract using a unique dataset that matches banks with their client firms we investigate the differences between foreign and domestic banks in a developing country in particular we are interested in examining how foreign banks solve the information asymmetries that characterize lending relationships and whether those relationships have changed since the financial crisis of 2008 foreign banks are likely to limit their lending activity to larger firms or more transparent firms because they are at an informational disadvantage relative to domestic banks we find that foreign banks focus on relationships with foreign listed and larger firms in addition their portfolio is more heavily weighted towards firms in less competitive industries and exporting firms comparing outcomes for 2006 and 2009 we find that banks are more concerned with leverage in 2009 and have reduced the number of firms in their portfolio post crisis

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

default prediction with dynamic sectoral and macroeconomic frailties abstract this paper extends the macroeconomic frailty model to include sectoral frailty factors that capture default correlations among firms in a similar business we estimate sectoral and macroeconomic frailty factors and their effects on default intensity using the data for japanese firms from 1992 to 2010 we find strong evidence for the presence of sectoral frailty factors even after accounting for the effects of observable covariates and macroeconomic frailty on default intensity the model with sectoral frailties performs better than that without results show that accounting for the sources of unobserved sectoral default risk covariations improves the accuracy of default probability estimation

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

asset returns and economic disasters evidence from the s l crisis abstract this paper shows that depositors lost confidence in fslic during the two years prior to passage of firrea legislation which recapitalized the deposit insurance fund in 1989 during this period promised returns on retail cds reflected the expected loss and return standard deviation on these securities in the absence of government insurance cross sectional analysis is used to estimate both the probability and the conditional price of risk associated with fslic default the results suggest that increased uncertainty about both output and inflation in this disaster scenario drove the price of fslic default risk to extremely high levels the results also indicate that the market for retail deposits is characterized by less than perfect arbitrage across geographical regions

standby letters of credit and large bank capital an empirical analysis abstract a recent trend in commercial banking has been the rapid growth in the issuance of off balance sheet guarantees revised capital standards presume that banks are increasing the issuance of off balance sheet guarantees to generate fee income and conserve primary capital while shifting out of low risk assets the relationship between standby letters of credit an off balance sheet guarantee and large bank capital is tested using granger causality and then estimated in a structural model to accurately estimate the relationship a simultaneous equation model is required to capture the positive effect of bank capital on standby letter of credit issuance

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

deposit insurance and regulatory forbearance are caps on insured deposits optimal considerable academic and public policy attention has been focused on the deposit insurance contract and in particular its mispriced deposit insurance premium this has resulted in a burgeoning literature on the optimal pricing of deposit insurance guarantees see merton 1977 1978 pyle 1983 ronn and verma 1986 acharya and dreyfus 1989 and allen and saunders 1993 for examples in addition other authors have studied the ability of uninsured depositors or debtholders to provide market discipline in the form of marketbased risk premia in the absence of explicit risk based insurance premia see for example ellis and flannery 1989 and avery belton and goldberg 1988 however a third control instrument namely the setting of ceilings or caps on the amount of deposit insurance coverage has not been subject to rigorous investigation in particular while the fdic 1989 and others have considered the general pros and cons of limiting the scope of deposit insurance for instance by lowering the 100 000 ceiling on the amount of insurance per account or by restricting the brokering in of deposits l no formal analysis of the role of coverage caps can be

estimating a household production function heterogeneity the demand for health inputs and their effects on birth weight the household production literature emphasizes that technical or biological processes condition input selection by households in their production activities along with prices and income exogenous variations in health to the extent that they are perceived by individuals heterogeneity lead to correlations between inputs and health outcomes that cannot be used to derive causal conclusions therefore estimates of health technology must be obtained from a behavioral model in which health inputs are themselves choices consistent estimates are reported of the effect of endogenous inputs such as medical care smoking and fertility on birth weight and fetal growth in the presence of health heterogeneity

common failings how corporate defaults are correlated we test the doubly stochastic assumption under which firms default times are correlated only as implied by the correlation of factors determining their default intensities using data on u s corporations from 1979 to 2004 this assumption is violated in the presence of contagion or frailty unobservable explanatory variables that are correlated across firms our tests do not depend on the time series properties of default intensities the data do not support the joint hypothesis of well specified default intensities and the doubly stochastic assumption we find some evidence of default clustering exceeding that implied by the doubly stochastic model with the given intensities why do corporate defaults cluster in time several explanations have been explored first firms may be exposed to common or correlated risk factors whose co movements cause correlated changes in conditional default probabilities second the event of default by one firm may be contagious in that one such event may directly induce other corporate failures as with the collapse of penn central railway in 1970 third learning from default may generate default correlation for example to the extent that the defaults of enron and worldcom revealed accounting irregularities that could be present in other firms they may have had a direct impact on the conditional default probabilities of other firms our primary objective is to examine whether cross firm default correlation that is associated with observable factors determining conditional default probabilities the first channel on its own is sufficient to account for the degree of time clustering in defaults that we find in the data

term structures of credit spreads with incomplete accounting information we study the implications of imperfect information for term structures of credit spreads on corporate bonds we suppose that bond investors cannot observe the issuer s assets directly and receive instead only periodic and imperfect accounting reports for a setting in which the assets of the firm are a geometric brownian motion until informed equityholders optimally liquidate we derive the conditional distribution of the assets given accounting data and survivorship contrary to the perfect information case there exists a default arrival intensity process that intensity is calculated in terms of the conditional distribution of assets credit yield spreads are characterized in terms of accounting information generalizations are provided

alcoholism work and income this article reports on an empirical analysis of the relationships between alcoholism and income and working we show that the relationships between alcoholism and labor market success have important age or life cycle dimensions we present evidence that alcoholism may affect income more by restricting labor market participation than by affecting the wages of workers finally we demonstrate that the effects of alcoholism on earnings depend on the extent to which one controls for other covariates associated with alcoholism as such we suggest that there may be important indirect as well as direct effects of alcoholism on labor market success

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

does the debt market assess large banks risk time series evidence from money center cds abstract uninsured bank liabilities should offer a promised yield that compensates depositors for their expected default losses however the conjectural guarantees available to large u s banking firms makes it questionable whether large depositors should or do feel themselves exposed to credit risk prior papers have evaluated the determinants of bank risk premia using cross sectional data with relatively inconclusive results this paper investigates the same issue in a methodologically independent fashion using time series data on specific banks daily offering rates during the period may 1982 through july 1988 we find that cd rates paid by large money center banks include significant default risk premia

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

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

alcohol and earnings does drinking yield a wage premium this paper examines the relationship between alcohol consumption and earnings for prime age males wage differentials for non moderate and heavy drinkers are estimated using a polychotomous choice model which accounts for the endogenous relationship be tween drinking and earnings we find that moderate alcohol consumption leads to increased earnings relative to abstention however heavy drinking leads to reduced earnings relative to moderate drinking heavy drinkers possess flatter age earnings profiles and attain lower returns for higher education than non and moderate drinkers these results are in contrast to previous research on substance abuse which finds no earnings drop off for heavy users

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