the divergence of bank lending rates from policy rates after the financial crisis the role of bank funding costs abstract after the global financial crisis policy rates were cut to near zero levels yet bank lending rates did not fall as much as the decline in policy rates would have suggested if the crisis represents a structural break in the relationship between monetary policy and lending rates how should central banks view the post crisis transmission this poses a major puzzle for monetary policymakers using a new weighted average cost of liabilities to measure banks effective funding costs we show a model of interest rate pass through with dynamic panel data methods solves this puzzle and has many other advantages over traditional approaches it confirms central banks should focus on the cost and composition of bank liabilities as many are now doing to better understand and steer the dynamics of lending rates

natural resources curse or blessing are natural resources a curse or a blessing the empirical evidence suggests that either outcome is possible this paper surveys a variety of hypotheses and supporting evidence for why some countries benefit and others lose from the presence of natural resources these include that a resource bonanza induces appreciation of the real exchange rate deindustrialization and bad growth prospects and that these adverse effects are more severe in volatile countries with bad institutions and lack of rule of law corruption presidential democracies and underdeveloped financial systems another hypothesis is that a resource boom reinforces rent grabbing and civil conflict especially if institutions are bad induces corruption especially in nondemocratic countries and keeps in place bad policies finally resource rich developing economies seem unable to successfully convert their depleting exhaustible resources into other productive assets the survey also offers some welfare based fiscal rules for harnessing resource windfalls in developed and developing economies

bank consolidation and the dynamics of consumer loan interest rates this paper analyzes interest rates quoted by individual banks for personal and automobile loans in 10 cities personal loan rates are higher in concentrated markets and banks involved in mergers reduce personal rates relative to their competitors prior to the merger s completion this is consistent with mergers changing the size structure of personal loan markets and merger participants desire to gain regulatory approval auto rates are unaffected by local concentration and mergers suggesting that their market is nationwide rates for both loan types respond asymmetrically to changes in treasury rates being more sensitive to a rise than a fall

retail bank deposits as quasi fixed factors of production neoclassical models of the banking firm for example michael klein 1971 treat all deposit liabilities as fully variable factors of production banks then maximize profits minimize liability costs by equating the marginal costs of all liability types during each period the empirical relevance of these models is difficult to establish because binding deposit rate ceilings regulation q force bank competition for many retail deposits into implicit interest channels that are not readily measured it is therefore noteworthy that during two recent periods when deposit rate ceilings were not binding banks paid retail deposit rates considerably in excess of the rate at which they could borrow via large unregulated certificates of deposit such behavior seems inconsistent with the cost minimization prescribed by neoclassical bank models however if retail deposit accounts are interpreted as quasi fixed gary becker 1962 walter oi 1962 donald parsons 1972 sherwin rosen 1968 inputs to the banking firm these important historical observations can be reconciled with bank profit maximization this paper first describes two historical episodes during which the bank retail deposit rate exceeded the negotiable certificate of deposit rate for substantial periods of time while no profit maximizing cost minimizing bank would pay such a rate differential if retail deposit quantities are costlessly variable interpreting retail deposit accounts as quasi fixed inputs to the bank explains the peculiar rate structures a simple two period model of bank liability selection formalizes the analysis i two puzzling historical episodes

interest rate pass through and monetary transmission evidence from individual financial institutions retail rates official interest rate changes should influence short rates on money market instruments and retail products such as deposit accounts and mortgages but complete pass through is often taken for granted this paper provides a theoretical and econometric framework for assessing the evidence for this assumption using seventeen years of monthly data for rates on thirteen deposit and mortgage products offered by individual uk financial institutions the methodology allows for asymmetries and non linearities in adjustment and the results show that the speed of adjustment in retail rates depends on whether the perceived gap between retail and base rates is widening or narrowing

the federal funds market under bank deregulation the introduction of competitive interest rates on deposits is shown to effect the optimal decisions of banks by altering their optimal forecast of the federal funds rate the movement toward co mpetitive deposit rates increases the size of the monetary base neces sary for the fed to maintain its deposit targets when deposits and the monetary base are substitutes in addition there is less uncertainty in the federal funds market under competitive deposit rates when deposits and the monetary base are substitutes and the source of uncertainty is not from the supply of deposits copyright 1987 by ohio state university press

competition and interest rate ceilings in commercial banking regulations prohibiting the payment of explicit interest on demand deposits are gradually being eased as banks switch from payment in the form of free services to explicit interest both the level of money demand and the response of money demand to market interest rates will change banks are modeled here as being chamberlinian monopolistic competitors equilibrium deposit interest rate relationships are found for markets both with and without an effective interest rate ceiling and the behavior of the two markets is compared the elimination of deposit interest rate ceilings leads to increased money demand and an increased responsiveness of deposit rates to market interest rates

poverty traps the money growth rule and the stage of financial development abstract this paper investigates how monetary policy influences the emergence of local indeterminacy local bifurcations and multiple steady states depending upon the degree of the commitment parameter that defines financial market imperfection using diamond s overlapping generations model with credit market frictions the analytical results will show that poverty traps happen as an inevitable outcome under a wider range of money growth rates because financial markets are less developed put differently we derive analytically the positive link between financial development and per capita income

how do banks respond to shocks a dynamic model of deposit taking institutions abstract this paper proposes a dynamic model of the optimal choices of a bank that benefits from market power and takes into account the impact of the deposit generation process interbank lending borrowing emerges as a buffer that assists the bank in smoothing intertemporal adjustments in interdependent loan and deposit choices the bank smooths the impact of interest rates shocks on its customers to minimize the adjustments over time of the stocks of deposits and loans it does not however provide insurance against negative shocks of real origin that increase its expected default costs the predictions of the model help to shed light on the available empirical evidence and to analyze some recent developments of the banking industry

money demand instability has it ended abstract some researchers suggest that much of the seeming instability in the post 1973 money demand occurred because of financial innovation and deregulation money demand was in transition further unprecedented declines in the income velocity of circulation during 1985 and 1986 indicate that this hypothesized transition continues have the effects of financial innovation and deregulation run their course do additional unexpected shifts in velocity loom in the near future or has the transition come to a halt these questions are examined using the methodology of hafer and hein 1982 as modified by miller 1986 no evidence of structural shifts exists beyond 1986 m1 growth may have become a reliable monetary aggregate target again further the missing money has more than returned more money is held today than predicted by the pre 1973 money demand function since m1 now includes interest bearing transactions accounts and incorporates a saving motive the finding is not counterintuitive

the curse of natural resources in fractionalized countries abstract this paper develops a model that can explain why natural resources are a blessing for some countries but a curse for others in this model natural resources cause fighting activities between rivalling groups fighting reduces productive activities and weakens property rights making productive activities even less attractive the aggregate production decrease exceeds the natural resources direct positive income effect if and only if the number of rivalling groups is sufficiently large the model thus predicts that natural resources lower incomes in fractionalized countries but increase incomes in homogenous countries empirical evidence supporting this prediction is provided

an operational measure of liquidity embedding the process of selling an asset in a search environment enables one to provide an exact definition of liquidity an asset s liquidity is the expected time until it is sold while pursuing an optimal in the sense of maximization of expected discounted net proceeds policy this analysis reveals that this definition is compatible with most other notions of liquidity and in particular with those of john maynard keynes impatience the discount associatedwith a quick sale predictability and flexibility copyright 1986 by american economic association

a note on geography institutions and income inequality abstract past studies have linked geography and history to institutions and income but how have they influenced income inequality i consider long run determinants of income inequality using a cross section of countries only being landlocked has a strong association with inequality

natural resources and income inequality the role of ethnic divisions we hypothesize that natural resources raise income inequality in ethnically polarized societies but reduce income inequality in ethnically homogenous societies and we present empirical evidence in support of this hypothesis

the now account experiment and the demand for money abstract the authors use the now account experience in new england from 1972 to 1978 to estimate the responsiveness of the demand for money to interest payments on checkable accounts such an estimate is important in considering the effects on the demand for money of nationwide now s and of variations in interest rates on transactions balances in the future with new england as the experimental region and the rest of the united states as a control group the authors develop a cross section time series framework to isolate and to estimate the interest rate responsiveness of money demand while accounting for effects of income interest rates and gradual adjustment

natural resource booms and inequality theory and evidence we develop a theory in the context of a two sector growth model in which learning by doing drives growth to explain the time path of income inequality following natural resource booms in resource rich countries under the condition of a relatively unskilled labor intensive non traded sector inequality falls immediately after a boom and then increases steadily over time until the initial impact of the boom disappears using data for 90 countries between 1965 and 1999 we find evidence in support of the theory especially for oil and mineral booms we also find that uncertainty about future commodity prices increases long run inequality

sluggish adjustment of interest rates and credit rationing an application of unit root testing and error correction modelling a model with credit rationing due to asymmetric information is combined with a marginal cost pricing approach to bank behaviour the resulting model allows for explanation of the adjustment of deposit and loan rates to changes of the money market rate and is estimated in error correction form johansen s procedure is used to test the hypotheses the hypothesis that deposit and loan rates do not adapt immediately to changes in the money market rate cannot be rejected based on german monthly data the observation that loan rates react even slower than deposit rates can be rationalized by the effects of asymmetric information

deposit market deregulation and interest rates the evolving deregulation of financial markets has sparked interest in the economic implications of increased flexibility in previously regulated markets much of the analysis has focused on deposit markets in which legislated maximum rates are being replaced by market determined equilibrium rates moreover because changes in deposit rates imply changes in the cost of funds to financial intermediaries concern has been voiced about the implications of deposit rate deregulation on the overall structure of interest rates specifically deregulation has been cited as one reason for the currently high rates of interest 2 in this paper we argue that this view of deregulation is flawed and we suggest that deregulation of deposit markets will lead to lower not higher loan and deposit rates furthermore we argue that previous analysis indicating that deposit deregulation leads to higher loan rates based on higher costs of funds to financial intermediaries depends on inadequate consideration of the role of implicit payments to depositors appropriate consideration of these implicit payments leads to results suggesting that deposit market deregulation should ceterus paribus lower loan rates the total cost of funds to banks falls as the interest rate ceiling is relaxed our theoretical results previewed here are admittedly at odds with some of the prior theoretical and empirical work on this issue our assumptions that the implicit deposit rate is flexible market determined and adjusts to clear the deposit market are crucial to our results

market structure and the nature of price rigidity evidence from the market for consumer deposits panel data on consumer bank deposit interest rates reveal asymmetric impacts of market concentration on the dynamic adjustment of prices to shocks banks in concentrated markets are slower to raise interest rates on deposits in response to rising market interest rates but are faster to reduce them in response to declining market interest rates thus banks with market power skim off surplus on movements in both directions since deposit interest rates are inversely related to the price charged by banks for deposits the results suggest that downward price rigidity and upward price flexibility are a consequence of market concentration

financial innovation and the demand for liquid assets note introduction recent innovations in the banking and finance sector have caused great difficulties for the conduct of monetary policy shifts in monetary aggregates unexplained by interest rate behavior when there are financial innovations make it difficult for the monetary authorities either to use an asset demand function in the conduct of monetary policy or to distill information from the behavior of monetary aggregates while the monetary authorities may know the specific innovations they generally do not know how these innovations will affect particular aggregates clearly such knowledge is important and essential since then the monetary authorities can more accurately interpret growth rates of the monetary aggregates and reduce policy mistakes especially when the growth rates of various aggregates differ substantially and the authorities must determine which aggregate is more reflective of general monetary conditions hester 1981 freedman 1983 and pierce 1984 among others have documented and discussed many of the specific financial innovations for the united states and canada as outlined by pierce these innovations generally can be divided into three types i those innovations which have lowered transactions costs for asset purchases and sales ii the emergence of previously unavailable assets and iii those innovations which allow institutions to avoid reserve requirements hester has theoretically analyzed the last of these this paper focuses on the other types of innovations primarily the first transactions or transfer costs are an important aspect of asset demands since most near money assets possess approximately equivalent risk characteristics the two most important features of competing assets are return and liquidity liquidity can be defined as the cost of transfer to an acceptable means of payment over the last decade both relative and absolute transfer costs and thus liquidity have varied dramatically and have generally been reduced this has caused substitutions between assets and thus shifts in monetary aggregates unexplained by macroeconomic variables such as income and interest rates it is such unexplained shifts over the last decade which have caused concern over the appropriate definitions of monetary aggregates

asset bubbles credit market imperfections and technology choice abstract this paper introduces a bubbly asset into the matsuyama 2007 model with credit market imperfections and multiple technologies and shows that there can exist multiple bubbly steady states and bubbles may cause underdevelopment traps by preventing the adoption of high productivity technology

resource shocks and human capital stocks brain drain or brain gain abstract based on the paradox of plenty resource abundant countries tend to be vulnerable for lower economic prosperity along with instable political institutions as well as corruption this paper sheds light on the relationship between resource abundance and the selectivity of migration first i combine a dutch disease model with a roy borjas model in order to elaborate on the relationship between resource shocks and migrant selectivity theoretically thereby i predict that resource booms give rise to brain drain effects which are mediated through distributional effects under certain conditions second i provide empirical evidence for the effect of resource shocks on migrant selectivity based on a structural equation model in order to disentangle effects on income inequality and migrant selectivity the results show that resource shocks especially oil booms strengthen brain drain effects in a sample with 116 source and 23 destination countries between 1910 and 2009

extending the concept of the resource curse natural resources and public spending on health this paper extends the concept of the resource curse by studying whether and through which transmission channels natural resource wealth affects social spending even though the availability of vast natural capital reserves has commonly been linked to the neglect of human development most of the literature has continued to focus on economic performance this paper is the first to empirically investigate the link between natural resource wealth and public health expenditures in light of the hypothesis that resource wealth as a source of unearned state income enhances state autonomy and increases volatility which leads to policies that fail to prioritize human development using a large panel dataset of world countries covering the period from 1995 to 2009 we find a robust significant inverse relationship between natural resource dependence and even abundance and public health spending over time the effect remains significant after controlling for state autonomy volatility and other factors these findings have implications for national authorities as well as the extractive industry governments should be made accountable for natural resource wealth and correct taxation could provide additional resources earmarked for health the extractive industry could increase their investments in sustainable corporate social responsibility operations specifically in the health sector

dynamic branching and interest rate competition of commercial banks evidence from hungary abstract i supplement previous models of bank competition by incorporating the endogenous branching choices of commercial banks i apply a dynamic structural model of banks branching and interest rate choices to a unique bank level dataset on hungarian commercial banks during 2004 2007 i find that banks charge a premium in interest rates for relative branch network dominance and banks with relatively smaller networks are less likely to close branches i present significant and robust estimates of branch setup costs and scrap values and discuss the potential use of branching restrictions as regulatory tools to alter lending rates and consumer surplus

resource rents distribution income inequality and poverty in iran abstract our goal is to examine the income inequality and welfare effects of the direct distribution of resource rents and subsequent taxation in iran we use survey based microdata that covers 140 000 individuals which include more than 36 000 iranian urban and rural households in 2009 we examine how direct distribution of oil and gas rents among all citizens and a subsequent direct income tax differ from distributional impacts of targeted policies on income inequality and poverty in iran our analysis shows that the resource dividend policy with a subsequent direct income tax has a significant decreasing effect on the household gini index while targeted policies are more effective in reducing number of households under the poverty line

how do anticipated changes to short term market rates influence banks retail interest rates evidence from the four major euro area economies in this paper we argue that banks anticipate short term market rates when setting interest rates on loans and deposits in order to include anticipated rates in an empirical model we use two methods to forecast market rates a level slope curvature model and a principal components model before including them in a model of retail rate adjustment for four retail rates in four major euro area economies using both aggregate data and data from individual french banks we find a significant role for forecasts of market rates in determining retail rates alternative specifications with futures information yield comparable results

portfolio redistribution impacts within the narrow monetary aggregate a number of important monetary and financial changes occurred in the 1980s a rising question among monetary economists is whether the character of m1 has changed substantially as a result in particular a frequent contention is that interest bearing checkable deposits behave as a savings type asset thus subjecting m1 to portfolio redistribution effects in the modern era this research examines the elasticities of substitution for a variety of financial assets pre and post 1980 results indicate that m1 subcomponents do show significant substitution with savings type assets however the portfolio redistribution impacts are not confined to the interest bearing checkable deposits further results indicate that this behavior is not unique to the 1980s copyright 1992 by ohio state university press

the banking industry under uncertain monetary policy abstract the optimal loan decisions of banks are shown to be dependent on the banks rational forecast of the future federal funds rate which in turn is related to the policy rule used by the fed consequently a change in the policy of the fed will alter the reduced form model of the banking industry this result brings into question the fed s ability to predict and control the money stock under the procedure adopted by the fed between october 1979 and september 1982

monetary policy under alternative bank market structures abstract the purpose of this paper is to derive and compare the short run effects of monetary policy under both perfectly and imperfectly competitive banking markets within the context of a general equilibrium framework which emphasizes the demands for and supplies of financial assets it is demonstrated that the structure of banking markets can have a bearing on the appropriate choice of policy targets and instruments specifically the federal funds rate is shown to be a potentially ineffective target instrument for policy under a competitive banking system although it can be used to produce conventional short run effects when banking markets are imperfect in contrast the level of currency and unborrowed reserves can be utilized as an effective target instrument under either form of bank market structure

asymmetric adjustment of commercial bank interest rates evidence from malaysia and singapore abstract this paper examines the rigidity of commercial bank interest rates using evidence from singapore and malaysia an asymmetric error correction technique is used to test whether mean adjustment lags are different when retail rates are above or below their equilibrium levels it is concluded in both countries that the mean adjustment lag is shorter when the deposit rate is above its equilibrium than when it is below its equilibrium using the framework of hannan and berger 1991 this finding implies that the hypothesis of collusion cannot be rejected

a note on reserve requirements and monetary control with a flexible deposit rate abstract this paper examines the relationship between reserve ratios and monetary control when deposit rates are flexible in the short run for a total reserves operating target it is shown that an increase in the deposit reserve ration may raise the variance of a monetary aggregate under an interest rate operating target it is also shown that the deposit reserve ratio affects both the expected value and the variance of a monetary aggregate these findings for the two alternative operating targets differ sharply from previous results which were based on the assumption of fixed deposit rates

the impact of federal deposit insurance on savings and loan failures this study empirically investigates the hypothesis that a higher real ceiling on federal deposit insurance leads to an increased failure rate for savings and loans s ls after providing a history of federal deposit insurance a formal model is developed the empirical analysis thereof examines both the percentage of federally insured s ls that failed and the number thereof that failed the results were consistent for both sets of estimates among other things the time series estimates reveal that the s l failure rate over the 1965 1989 study period were a decreasing function of the real price of imported crude oil the mortgage portfolio yield and the average capital asset ratio in addition the s l failure rate was found to be an increasing function of the cost of deposits the volatility of the mortgage portfolio yield recession and finally the real ceiling per account on federal deposit insurance

economic growth with bubbles this paper presents a stylized model of economic growth with bubbles this model views asset price bubbles as a market generated device to moderate the effects of frictions in financial markets improving the allocation of investments and raising the capital stock and welfare the model illustrates various channels through which asset price bubbles affect the incentives for innovation and economic reforms and therefore the rate of economic growth the model also offers a new perspective on the effects of financial development on asset price bubbles and economic growth

the behavior of money demand in the 1980s existing money demand functions did not predict the strength in m1 in the 1980s this strength derived from the combination of a change in the character of m 1 due to elnancial deregulation and the sharp fall in market rates that began in 1982 the public s m2 demand function however remains unaffected by the forces that altered the m1 demand function the character of the public s m 1 demand function changed with the legalization nationwide in january 1981 of the checkable deposits known as nows because nows pay explicit interest they are used by the public as an instrument for saving as well as for effecting transactions mehra 1986 the addition of nows to m1 therefore caused m1 to become more highly substitutible with the savings instruments included in the non ml component of m2 that is savings deposits small time deposits money market deposit accounts mmdas and money market mutual funds of noninstitutional investors mmmfs furthermore financial institutions move the rate paid on nows only sluggishly in response to changes in market rates in contrast the rates paid on small time deposits mmdas and mmmfs move promptly in response to changes in market rates consequently when market rates fell beginning in late summer 1982 the differential between the rates paid on the non ml components of m2 and on nows fell sharply the public then substituted out of the non ml components of m2 and into the nows in m1 these substitutions increased m1 de

a computation of interest equivalences for nonprice characteristics of bank products this paper seeks to price the nonprice features of british retail bank products it outlines a methodology for computing interest equivalences for a selection of characteristics estimates are obtained for a full observation set and a subset of survivor products on an efficiency frontier its main findings are that certain nonprice features are significant and there does not appear to be a strong case for separating out those products that lie on an efficiency frontier copyright 1992 by ohio state university press

financial innovation new assets and the behavior of money demand abstract two fundamental changes in us banking regulations have affected the behavior of money demand m1 the first authorized checkable deposit accounts paying explicit interest rates the second allowed these rates to be market determined the theoretical literature does not directly address the impact of these events suggesting that they are primarily an empirical issue however the empirical literature has yet to agree on the impact of financial innovation on money demand for example several studies report an increase in the elasticity of money demand several others report a decline this paper uses a lancaster type choice model to analyze formally the expected impact of these two changes on the demand for money the model derives specific conditions under which i the demand for money increases as new assets are introduced and ii the impact of either the introduction of new assets or the elimination of interest rate restrictions on the elasticity of money demand

imperfect competition in bank retail markets deposit and loan rate dynamics and incomplete pass through this paper examines determinants of pass through from the market interest rate to bank retail deposit and loan rates a dynamic adjustment cost model with imperfect competition implies that these rates depend on own lagged values and on lagged current and expected future values of the security rate greater competition in retail markets reduces the impact of lagged and expected rates on current retail rates while raising the effect of the current security rate yielding greater pass through these results have important implications for both the specifications used in empirical work and biases introduced into estimates of pass through effects

dynamic monetary control and interest rate stabilization abstract interest rate stabilization results in an instrument shortage that complicates monetary control by introducing strategic considerations into the trading desk s decision problem the paper demonstrates that when expected future open market operations influence current bank and depositor behavior an instrument shortage is necessary and sufficient for the commitment policy to be time inconsistent and for the discretionary policy to be suboptimal i e worse than the commitment policy the moving average component of the commitment policy is of higher order than the discretionary policy under either regime the expected value of the representative bank is increasing in the trading desk s emphasis on interest rate stability

inferring market power from time series data abstract using bank specific data on deposit rates this paper tests for the existence of market power in banking by means of time series estimations a test is developed that can reject perfect competition on the basis of the observed relationship over time between deposit rates and security rates adjusted for operating costs the analysis also examines whether pricing behavior differs across markets and banking products in a manner consistent with hypothesized differences price taking behavior is rejected for the vast majority of banks for the deposit category that one would expect to be more geographically limited greater market power is found to be exercised by banks located in more concentrated markets

income distribution factor endowments and trade openness abstract this paper studies the empirical links among factor endowments trade and personal income distribution by using panel data we show that land and capital intensive countries have a less equal income distribution while skill intensive countries have a more equal income distribution we also show that the effects of trade openness on inequality depend on factor endowments in a way consistent with several recent case studies but not with the simple hecksher ohlin framework our results are robust to the division of the sample according to level of income the inclusion of different regressors the use of different measures of trade openness and of relative factor abundance and tests for possible problems of endogeneity

oil curse economic growth and trade openness an important economic paradox in the economic literature is that countries with abundant natural resources are poor in terms of real gross domestic product per capita this paradox known as the resource curse is contrary to the conventional intuition that natural resources help to improve economic growth and prosperity using panel data for 95 countries this study revisits the resource curse paradox in terms of oil resources abundance for the period 1980 2017 in addition the study examines the role of trade openness in influencing the relationship between oil abundance and economic growth the study finds trade openness is a possible avenue to reduce the resource curse in our sample trade openness reduces oil curse by around 25 trade openness allows countries to obtain competitive prices for their resources in the international market and access advanced technologies to extract resources more efficiently therefore natural resource rich economies can reduce the resource curse by increasing exposure to international trade

the management of near money in the miller orr model is not optimal the most prominent model of the transactions demand for money that incorporates the availability of more than one interest bearing asset is that of miller and orr 1968 this three asset model is an extension of their simpler two asset money bonds model in which money is managed as an inventory with the objective of minimizing holding and transactions costs the extended model is used in graduatelevel textbooks to show that a corporate money manager facing an array of assets will behave much like the manager faced with a choice between money and only one type of security so that the simple model is an adequate basis for modeling the demand for money 1 in empirical work a similar belief is reflected in implementations of the transactions model of money demand that utilize a broad definition of money as though transactions motives will induce a money manager to handle a spectrum of near money assets in the same way as the medium of exchange the miller orr model appears to support such interpretations because in its three asset version the interrnediate interest bearing asset is managed in a fashion similar to that of non interest bearing money but when miller and orr solve this extended version of their model they neglect the corner solution that would allow the manager to hold only the highest yielding asset in this note i show that when the corner solution is

discount window borrowing monetary policy and the post october 6 1979 federal reserve operating procedure abstract a demand schedule for discount window borrowing based on profit maximizing bank behavior is derived a feature of non price rationing at the discount window making longer duration borrowing more costly is shown to make lagged borrowing and expected future spreads between the federal funds rate and the discount rate relevant to the current borrowing decision consequently both the size of the coefficients in the borrowing functions as well as the form of the function itself depend on expected fed policy toward the spread the demand function for discount window borrowing provides the critical link by which non borrowed reserve control affects short term interest rates and ultimately the money supply under post october 6 1979 reserve targeting the analysis suggests some reasons why the fed has experienced difficulty in specifying estimating and utilizing a discount window borrowing function in the non borrowed reserve operating procedure

monetary policy lessons of recent inflation and disinflation by 1975 most economists agreed that the money demand function in the united states was reasonably stable and could serve as a reliable basis for the formulation of monetary policy those suspicious of monetarism were on the defensive in the light of the apparently inexorable increase of m1 velocity of about three percent per year with deviations of only a few tenths of a percent experience with rising money growth and rising inflation through 1980 only confirmed monetarist views as figure 1 shows all this had changed by 1986 with disinflation in the 1980s m1 velocity departed convincingly from its 1953 79 trend the money demand function seems to have fallen apart and is apparently not a reliable basis for monetary policy after all consequently the first major section following this introduction is devoted to the decline of velocity after 1981 and the demise of the standard money demand function some authors including i believe benjamin friedman conclude that this evidence leaves us so uncertain about the nature of money demand that policymakers cannot rely at all on any presumed money demand regularities in contrast my working hypothesis is that the money demand continues to be a stable function of relatively few variables but that the interest elasticity of money demand is substantially higher than previously thought others have sought money demand explanations in terms of regime shifts but that literature will not be discussed here events have not been kind to keynesian monetary policy positions either keynesians tend to concentrate on interest rates especially real interest rates as the best guide to the effects of monetary policy on the economy the real rate is discussed

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

costs of adjustment portfolio separation and the dynamic behavior of bank loans and deposits this paper develops a model of the banking firm and tests for the presence of portfolio separation the theoretical model generalizes existing intertemporal adjustment costs models by assuming that these costs coexist simultaneously on both sides of the bank s balance sheet our analysis predicts that bank loan demand and deposit supply respond to past current and expected fixture values of the federal funds rate deposit rate and loan rate we estimate the model and find that the restrictions imposed by the portfolio separation assumption are inconsistent with the estimated behavior of the banking firms in our sample we also find some limited empirical support for our extended model of the adjustment cost process copyright 1995 by ohio state university press

liquidity preference as behavior toward risk is a demand for short term securities not money in 1958 james tobin generalized the keynesian theory of liquidity preference by means of his famous portfolio model in which the demand for money narrowly defined is treated as behavior towards interest risk whatever merit this theory may have had then has long since been questionable the reason is the existence of a large set of substitutes for money typically short term money market instruments which can be regarded as riskless or virtually so and which pay substantial interest the availability of these instruments would appear to make tobin s theory that money is held to cope with interest risk resemble a scenario without a recognizable cast of actors in the literature on monetary theory other authors have also expressed misgivings about the tobin theory by noting that savings and nontransferable time deposits have the same risk properties as money but pay interest see for example robert barro and stanley fischer 1976 although correct the allusion to these deposits is simplistic it is true that while both types mimic money s freedom from interest risk in the conventional sense of capital loss time deposits are still exposed to a kind of interest risk because they can be liquidated before maturity only with interest penalty more important business firms are either denied access to savings deposits or as in the united states can hold a maximum of 150 000 per account at commercial banks thereby effectively eliminating large firms as holders furthermore although business firms can own most time deposits they typically do not except for negotiable cds a money market instrument they are loath to tie up funds in long term maturities and they can usually obtain the same or higher yields on other types of short term debt instruments that are also negotiable in the united states households have long accounted for about one third of demand deposits business firms owning most of the rest therefore any effort to rest a case against the tobin theory of money demand on the existence of savings and time deposits gets at only a small part of the problem this stricture extends to so called now and ats accounts these interest bearing demand deposits disguised under other names are also denied to business firms for them the short term instruments of the money market are the principal alternative to money in asset portfolios

the impact of deregulation on price and non price competition in the portuguese deposits market abstract the portuguese deposits market experienced a pronounced deregulation phase from 1986 to 1992 during that period the situation moved from a highly regulated market in which government controlled institutions accounted for more than 90 of the market to a complete integration into the fully liberalised european internal market this paper studies the evolution of market power and non price competition during that deregulation process using panel data a system of three equations was estimated representing optimality decisions for deposit rates advertising expenditures and branches an important conclusion is that interest rate and entry deregulation were associated with an increase in both price and non price competition the small foreign owned banks were found to have virtually no market power in deposits on the other hand although no direct relationship between market power and market share was found significant market power was detected for the wholesale and banks that existed since before the revolution thus mergers between large banks are not likely to directly increase market power for the participating firms although the association found between market power and concentration suggests that such mergers may increase the banking industry s profits

does natural resource abundance increase latin american income inequality abstract why is income inequality higher in latin america than in east asia is this phenomenon related to the region s natural resource abundance is it a contributor to latin america s slow and narrowly focused human capital accumulation if so can anything be done to reverse the latin american trends or should we think of the region s fate as unalterable to help answer these questions this paper draws upon standard trade theory and cross sectional empirical analysis to demonstrate that natural resource intensive sectors particularly permanent agriculture absorb capital that might otherwise flow to manufacturing this depresses workers incentive to accumulate skill and delays industrialization

credit traps and credit cycles we develop a simple macroeconomic model of credit market imperfections with heterogeneous investment projects the projects differ in productivity the investment requirement and the severity of agency problems behind the borrowing constraints a movement in borrower net worth shifts the composition of the credit between projects with different productivity levels thereby causing endogenous investment specific technological change furthermore such endogenous technological change in turn affects borrower net worth these composition effects could give rise to credit traps credit collapse leapfrogging credit cycles and growth miracles in the dynamics of the aggregate investment and borrower net worth jel e22 e44 o33

changing money financial innovation in developed countries preface contributors 1 financial innovations and monetary theory marcello de cecco university of siena and european university institute 2 financial change in the united states albert m wojnilower managing director and chief economist first boston corporation 3 the current status of the regulation of financial services and products in the united states developments and trends meyer eisenberg national center on financial services and professor of law berkeley 4 on the empirical detection of financial innovation donald d hester professor of economics university of wisconsin 5 measuring the opportunity for product innovation meghnad desai professor of economics lse and william low professor of economics lse and essex university 6 financial innovation in britain john h forsyth director morgan grenfell ltd 7 financial innovation in germany hermann josef dudler director deutsche bundesbank 8 financial innovation in italy a lop sided process c caranza and c cottarelli banca d italia 9 lessons from the french experience as compared with some other oecd countries christian de boissieu professor of economics university of paris i 10 financial innovation in japan its origins diffusions and impacts yoshio suzuki director institute for economics and marketing studies bank of japan 11 the private ecu market a case of international financial innovation enrico guglielmotto and giuseppe passatore instituto bancario san paolo di torino

natural resources a curse on education spending abstract in line with the rising interest in harnessing natural resource revenues for economic and human development through productive government investments this paper aims to address an important blind spot in our understanding of the resource curse by contributing innovative insights on how natural resource wealth impacts government priorities and expenditure practices using a large panel dataset of 140 countries covering the period from 1995 to 2009 we find an adverse effect of resource dependence on public education expenditures relative to gdp that is robust to controlling for a range of additional covariates furthermore our findings indicate that this resource curse effect on the government prioritization of education mainly stems from point source natural resources these results are of particular importance for the sustainable management of natural resource wealth in developing countries as they could achieve especially high returns by investing resource revenues in public goods such as education while this paper underlines the importance of institutions and government accountability our findings also raise questions on the role of the private sector as a partner in development as the extractives industry could consider increasing funding for education through corporate social responsibility csr initiatives

competitive interest payments on bank deposits and the long run demand for money reply this paper tests two assumptions made in previous demand for money studies the first assumption concerns the role assigned to the interest rate in the demand for money function common practice identifies the rate of interest with the opportunity cost of holding money in section i this formulation is shown to blur an important distinction between the price of money and the price of money substitutes and to implicitly assume that the relevant price variable is the difference between these two distinct prices a second assumption is that the current ban on interest payments on demand deposits is fully effective in section ii i operationally define these price variables and estimate perfectly competitive interest payments on commercial bank deposits this is done by crudely measuring commercial bank marginal costs and assuming that all excess profit is passed on to depositors in indirect ways section iii presents estimates of a more complete longrun demand for money relationship which explicitly includes an own price and a cross price as separate influences and assumes that the prohibition of the payment of interest on deposits is totally ineffective although no firm conclusion is reached concerning the proper functional specification of the demand function the results significantly improve upon previous demand for money estimates which assumed that the interest payment prohibition is totally effective in section iv the results are summarized and implications of the analysis for monetary theory are presented my competitive demand for money formulation leads to a reinterpretation of the existing evidence on what is generally referred to as the interest elasticity of demand for money this estimate is shown to be significantly biased downward it also implies that the demand for and supply of money are more interdependent than is usually assumed

bank market structure and monetary control financial innovations and regulatory actions together have acted to produce sweeping changes in the u s financial environment much of the recent literature in the area of money and banking has been concerned with the implications of these developments for monetary policy however one major aspect of this issue which has been relatively ignored is the relationship between the competitive structure of banking markets and the capability of the federal reserve to exercise control over its intermediate or ultimate policy goals given that deregulation of banking and various forms of financial innovations e g technological innovations in the provision of financial services the proliferation of various near money financial assets and the growth of nonbank financial intermediaries have altered the competitive environment in banking it seems clear that this relationship should be investigated two previous efforts to examine the monetary policy implications of different bank market structures are aftalion and white 1977 and vanhoose 1983 in each of those papers the short run real sector effects of potential policy instruments under the structural extremes of perfect competition and monopoly are derived and contrasted however the analysis in each case is based upon models in which perfect certainty is assumed and no interactions are allowed between the real and

retail bank deposit pricing an intertemporal asset pricing approach fundamentally spreads between market and deposit interest rates increase when interest rates rise and decline when rates fall recent empirical studies have found this phenomenon to be related to market concentration static equilibrium models are poorly equipped to explain this behavior in this paper the author applies an intertemporal asset pricing model incorporating bank deposits as a form of money in order to analyze the pricing behavior of a banking sector exercising market power his results extend the theoretical literature on deposit pricing and provide some insights into the behavior of interest rate spreads through time copyright 1995 by ohio state university press

modelling british interest rate adjustment an error correction approach an error correction model is used to capture the dynamics of british retail deposit and loan rate responses to changes in the central bank s base rate the test is conducted using a monthly series of interest rates for four generic retail banking products over the period 1986 93 the adjustment process is found to vary considerably between and within banks and products the results suggest that this market continues to exhibit many features of imperfect competition and that adjustment differences could affect the speed of the money transmission mechanism

monetary policy in a model with a federal funds market fixed versus flexible deposit rates this paper examines the comparative static effects of various monetary policy instruments under the assumption of a market determined interest rate on demand deposits and alternatively for the case of an exogenously fixed demand deposit rate in both cases monetary policy effects are analyzed where the monetary policy operating target is either the federal funds rate or a reserve aggregate the aim of the paper is to assess the differences in monetary policy effects for each operating procedure between the flexible and fixed deposit rate cases we extend previous analyses of this subject by incorporating an explicit federal funds market in our model and providing a detailed analysis of monetary policy with a federal funds rate operating target with both a flexible and a fixed deposit rate additionally we consider the differences in the role of secondary monetary policy instruments such as the discount rate and the required reserve ratio in the different regimes finally the paper considers the implications of flexibility of the deposit rate for the feasibility of the current monetary policy strategy of using a short run operating target either the federal funds rate or a reserve aggregate to attain target

market interest rates and commercial bank profitability an empirical investigation the widespread notion that commercial banks borrow short and lend long implies that sharp market interest rate increases may induce a significant number of banking failures this paper develops a method for estimating average asset and liability maturities for a sample of large money center banks regression models are tested to determine if market rate fluctuations have a significant impact on bank profitability the conclusion is negative large banks have effectively hedged themselves against market rate risk by assembling asset and liability portfolios with similar average maturities the impact of market interest rates on commercial bank revenues costs and profitability has increasingly concerned economists and policymakers as financial market conditions have become more volatile in recent years the widespread notion that depository intermediaries borrow short and lend long implies that rapid market rate increases may induce an unacceptable number of financial firm failures monetary policy discussions have reflected this concern for many years the federal reserve board considered stable market rates a goal or at least an intermediate target of monetary policy the extent to which money market conditions are permitted to fluctuate in the short run is also affected by the unique role of the federal reserve system as the nation s lender of last resort liquidity pressures ultimately devolve on the money market and the federal reserve has a responsibility for maintaining orderly conditions in that market

consumer theory and the demand for money the following sections are included introductionthe definition of moneythe microeconomic theory of a monetary economythe aggregation theoretic approach to money demandindex number theorythe links between aggregation theory index number theory and monetary theoryunderstanding the new divisia aggregatesthe optimal level of monetary subaggregationeconometric considerationsapproximating the monetary services subutility functionan exampleempirical dimensionsempirical comparisons of index numbersempirical results for the demand system approachextensionsconclusions this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

inequality and institutions abstract this paper presents theory and evidence on the relationship between inequality and institutional quality we exhibit a model in which the two may dynamically reinforce each other and set to test this relationship with a broad array of institutional measures the double causality between institutional strength and a more equal distribution of income is empirically established using dynamic panel and linear feedback analysis

oil abundance and income inequality the paper empirically investigates the impact of natural resource abundance in particular oil on income disparities it employs common correlated effects pooled mean group methodology for estimation to account for the cross country heterogeneity and cross section dependence in the oil inequality nexus in a sample of developed and developing countries we find that oil abundance as well as oil dependence reduce income inequality this inequality reducing effect is highly likely to operate from better education attainments and improved health status due to oil booms

deregulation and oligopolistic rivalry in bank deposit markets abstract this paper provides a partial equilibrium analysis of a deregulated market for bank deposits in which banks behave oligopolistically but entry and exit are freely permitted it is demonstrated that the effects of variations in market interest rates reserve requirements and bank cost and demand conditions upon the market quantity of bank deposit money are fundamentally altered if the degree of bank rivalry adjusts endogenously hence banking deregulation may produce significant changes in the relationships between these variables and the stock of deposit money

the price concentration relationship in banking the commonly observed positive correlation between market concentration and profitability may be explained by noncompetitive pricing behavior as argued by the structure performance hypothesis or by the greater efficiency of firms with dominant market shares as argued by the efficient structure hypothesis by examining the price concentration relationship instead of the profit concentration relationship this paper tests the structure performance hypothesis in a manner that excludes the efficient structure hypothesis as an alternative explanation of the results the results strongly support the structure performance hypothesis and are robust with respect to model specification measurement of concentration and econometric technique copyright 1989 by mit press

bank deposit rate clustering theory and empirical evidence the market prices of stocks and other assets tend to cluster on round fractions a similar clustering is found in the interest rates paid on retail bank deposits however the theoretical rationales given for asset price clustering are incompatible with the clustering of retail deposit rates this paper proposes a theory based on depositors limited recall it shows that when banks exploit this phenomenon deposit rates will tend to be set at round fractions and will be relatively sticky at these levels the implications of this theoretical model are tested using money market deposit account and retail certificate of deposit interest rate data from a sample of more than 500 banks