bank loan portfolios and the monetary transmission mechanism abstract we study the portfolio behavior of bank loans following a monetary tightening and find that real estate and consumer loans sharply decrease while commercial and industrial c i loans increase these responses are compared with responses following non monetary shocks which also reduce output but keep interest rates roughly unchanged during such a non monetary downturn c i loans sharply decrease while real estate and consumer loans show no substantial response these responses together with the responses of relevant lending rates are hard to reconcile with a decline in the supply of c i bank loans during a monetary downturn as stressed by the bank lending channel several arguments are presented explaining why the supply of c i loans may actually increase after a monetary contraction

achieving sustainability and development through collective action an empirical analysis of the impact of the bore pool sharing program on farm incomes and crop choices summary repeated droughts in agriculture have promoted intensive reliance upon groundwater resources thereby exacerbating the already stressed groundwater reservoir situations all across the globe this has also resulted in increased inequality among farmers by allowing those with better physical assets such as borewells to extract water at the cost of less affluent farmers as a response bore pool sharing collective arrangements were introduced in some parts of india with the intention of slowing down the rate of groundwater depletion and helping improve the livelihoods of the worst affected farmers such arrangements work through promoting collective management of groundwater resources by providing critical and timely irrigation to rain fed crops and through dis incentivizing the cultivation of high water consuming crops we investigate the impact of bore pool sharing programs on crop incomes and cropping patterns of the participating households in south india a probit 2sls model and propensity score matching method are used to evaluate the impact of such programs while controlling for self selection biases results indicate that farmers participation in bore pool sharing collectives is positively associated with their crop incomes however contrary to expectation the share of high water intensive crops also increases with participation in addition share of water intensive crops is higher for a collective group with a higher ratio of bore wells to number of participating households finally farmers within the pool with multiple past failed bore well sinking attempts tend to extract more water thereby threatening the sustainability of the groundwater as well as the livelihoods of the farming community

institutions and environmental governance a reconceptualization abstract this article presents the conceptual revisions needed to extend the new institutional approach to environmental governance from its current local and international domains of application to all governance solutions including national environmental and natural resource use policies and multi level governance solutions that are increasingly used to address global environmental change the article suggests that environmental governance is best understood as the establishment reaffirmation or change of institutions to resolve conflicts over environmental resources it also explains why the choice of these institutions is a matter of social justice rather than of efficiency the article suggests a way to understand formal and state centered governance solutions as forms of collective ownership not unlike common property the article demonstrates how institutional analysis can gain resolution by looking at the functional and structural tiers organization of governance functions and formulation of key institutional rules as key aspects of the design of governance institutions

institutional design of public agencies and coproduction a study of irrigation associations in taiwan abstract the provision and production of many public goods and services involve the joint effort of government officials and citizen users this paper examines the successful experience of irrigation governance and management in taiwan as a means of understanding how joint efforts can be established and sustained through institutional arrangements several principles for institutional design including a careful definition of the scope of farmers participation complementarity of interests between individuals reduction of asymmetries involved in the use of authority and the existence of domains of autonomy are identified as instrumental to the success in taiwan

choice of varieties by sri lanka rice farmers comparing alternative decision models sri lanka rice farmers are faced with a choice between traditional and high yielding rice varieties three risky choice models are compared to explain producer behavior forty farmers with typically small rice areas were studied choice criteria compared were multiple two attribute utility maximization single profit attribute utility maximization and expected profit maximization expected utility maximization performed better than expected profit maximization single attribute utility maximization outperformed the more complex multiattribute utility model the importance of careful elicitation of subjective probability distributions is emphasized rice farmers appear to allocate their land between available technologies in an economically rational way

interpreting the macroeconomic time series facts the effects of monetary policy existing theory and evidence on the effects of monetary policy are reviewed substantial room for disagreement among economists remains new evidence based on multivariate time series studies of several countries is presented while certain patterns in the data consistent with effective monetary policy are strikingly similar across countries others particularly the tendency of interest rate increases to predict high inflation are harder to reconcile with effective monetary policy

rent seeking and gender in local governance abstract the paper examines the relationship between corruption and gender in the context of local government in india using a logit model recent debates about women s participation in electoral politics suggests that the presence of more women in government will engender public policy and also tends to reduce corruption the evidence we examined indicates that gender is not a significant factor in explaining levels of corruption although nearly 40 per cent of the elective positions in the institutions of local government are occupied by women there is no significant gender difference in attitudes towards rent seeking or in actual levels of corruption between male and female representatives

uncertainty and disaster avoidance behaviour in peasant farming evidence from bangladesh a sample of smallholding farmers in the pabna region of bangladesh provide data to test predictions of a safety first model and of a profit maximisation model of farmer behaviour of the two sets of predictions the data tend to support those of the safety first model more frequently than they support the predictions of the profit maximisation model while the degree to which the former model out performs the latter is not great it is important to note that when the major inputs land and human labour and the major outputs rice and jute are focused upon the safety first model performs much better than the profit maximisation model

the political realities of african management abstract amidst the outburst of concern for public management in africa there is frequently a failure to distinguish among its components policy making leadership general internal administration and bureaucratic hygiene accounting procurement the merit system etc each of these four areas is different in the importance that it has for project performance the knowledge base that is available for improving it and the way in which it is affected by african political and social structures as a consequence those seeking to improve public management on the continent frequently are mistaken in the priorities that they establish and import inappropriate management technologies

the management of irrigation systems how to evoke trust and avoid prisoner s dilemma abstract the performance of canal irrigation systems depends partly on trust by farmers in the good faith and abilities of irrigation officials in india this trust is typically lacking there is instead a prisoners dilemma type syndrome of anarchy under the canals in which farmers lack the confidence that if they refrain from taking water out of turn they will get water on time and officials lack the confidence that if they work conscientiously to deliver the water on time farmers will refrain from rule breaking in east asia this syndrome of irrigation anarchy scarcely exists the reasons for the difference are partly to do with agro climatic conditions but they are also related to policy relevant variables of physical design and organizational arrangements within the constraints of agro climatic conditions features of east asian design and organization might usefully be transferred to indian conditions including break point reservoirs irrigation scheduling and monitoring separation of construction organization from operations and maintenance organization and catchment based operating agencies with their own revenue base

the evolution of a financial crisis collapse of the asset backed commercial paper market this paper documents runs on asset backed commercial paper abcp programs in 2007 we find that one third of programs experienced a run within weeks of the onset of the abcp crisis and that runs as well as yields and maturities for new issues were related to program level and macro financial risks these findings are consistent with the asymmetric information framework used to explain banking panics have implications for commercial paper investors degree of risk intolerance and inform empirical predictions of recent papers on dynamic coordination failures

an inquiry into power and participatory natural resource management decentralised environmental governance based on community participation is increasingly replacing top down natural resource management there is increasing awareness however that such mechanisms might fail to ensure effective participation by all stakeholders and be prone to producing and or perpetuating power inequalities against this backdrop we claim that power should be positioned at the centre of analyses of natural resource management in this paper we provide a taxonomy of positions to analyse participatory decision making in natural resource management we operationalise this framework to analyse two failures of participatory natural resource management in turkey focusing on reasons for failure and the role of power asymmetries our results are based on case studies comprising in depth interviews focus groups and a survey administered to 944 individuals we conclude that participatory mechanisms are highly unlikely to bring democratic and equitable outcomes unless power relations are addressed at both institutional and local levels copyright oxford university press

how capital regulation and other factors drive the role of shadow banking in funding short term business credit abstract this paper empirically analyzes how capital regulation risk and other factors altered the relative use of shadow banking funded short term business debt since the early 1960s results indicate that the share was affected over the long run not only by changing information and reserve requirement costs but also by shifts in relative regulation of bank versus nonbank credit sources such as basel i in 1990 and reregulation in 2010 in the short run the shadow bank share rose when deposit interest rate ceilings were binding on traditional banks the economic outlook improved or risk premia declined and fell when event risks arose

an international comparison of capital structure and debt maturity choices this study examines how the institutional environment influences capital structure and debt maturity choices of firms in 39 developed and developing countries we find that a country s legal and tax system corruption and the preferences of capital suppliers explain a significant portion of the variation in leverage and debt maturity ratios specifically firms in more corrupt countries and those with weaker laws tend to use more debt especially short term debt explicit bankruptcy codes and deposit insurance are associated with higher leverage and more long term debt more debt is used in countries where there is a greater tax gain from leverage

loan commitments and optimal monetary policy abstract with loan commitments negotiated in advance the use of tight money to restrain nominal spending has asymmetric effects upon different categories of borrowers this can reduce efficiency even though aggregate demand is stabilized an equilibrium model of financial intermediation with loan commitments is developed and used to analyze the welfare consequences of alternative monetary policies if demand uncertainty relates primarily to the number of borrowers rather than to each one s demand for credit an interest rate smoothing policy is optimal

modules for modernisation colonial irrigation in india and the technological dimension of agrarian change water control is central to the political economy of water distribution in large scale irrigation in india the changes in water distribution irrigation technology and agrarian development through the introduction of the block system technical devices called modules and volumetric water pricing in the nira left bank canal bombay presidency in the period 1900 40 are discussed to show the relationship of the three dimensions of water control technical managerial and socio political this analysis points to the crucial but contradictory role of the state in triggering processes of agricultural modernisation through intervention in water management the debate on the success of the block system continues to the present day but little progress has been made in designing solutions for inequality in water distribution the article suggests that liberalisation policies create political and institutional space for changing accountability relations and agricultural price regimes relevant to wa

loan commitments and monetary policy abstract in this paper we examine the impact of loan commitment agreements on the way in which monetary policy affects the economy we estimate a vector autoregressive var model and find evidence of a smaller impact of monetary policy on loans made under commitment agreements than on loans not made under commitment our conclusion is that loan commitments effectively protect borrowers from quantity credit rationing and thus force monetary policy to work mainly through interest rate channels

facts and challenges from the great recession for forecasting and macroeconomic modeling this paper provides a survey of business cycle facts updated to take account of recent data emphasis is given to the great recession which was unlike most other postwar recessions in the united states in being driven by deleveraging and financial market factors we document how recessions with financial market origins are different from those driven by supply or monetary policy shocks this helps explain why economic models and predictors that work well at some times do poorly at other times we discuss challenges for forecasters and empirical researchers in light of the updated business cycle facts

bank lending standards and access to lines of credit this paper examines how changes in bank lending standards are related to the availability of bank lines of credit for private and comparable public firms overall we find that access to lines of credit is more contingent on bank lending standards for private than for public firms the impact of bank lending standards is however asymmetric while private firms are less likely than public firms to gain access to new lines when credit market conditions are tight we find no difference between public and private firms in terms of their use or retention of pre existing lines we also find that private firms without lines of credit use more trade credit when bank lending standards are tight which is suggestive of a supply effect overall the evidence suggests that credit crunches are likely to have a disproportionate impact on private firms however pre existing banking relationships appear to mitigate the impact of these contractions on private firms

the emergence of cooperation among egoists this article investigates the conditions under which cooperation will emerge in a world of egoists without central authority this problem plays an important role in such diverse fields as political philosophy international politics and economic and social exchange the problem is formalized as an iterated prisoner s dilemma with pairwise interaction among a population of individuals results from three approaches are reported the tournament approach the ecological approach and the evolutionary approach the evolutionary approach is the most general since all possible strategies can be taken into account a series of theorems is presented which show 1 the conditions under which no strategy can do any better than the population average if the others are using the reciprocal cooperation strategy of tit for tat 2 the necessary and sufficient conditions for a strategy to be collectively stable and 3 how cooperation can emerge from a small cluster of discriminating individuals even when everyone else is using a strategy of unconditional defection

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

the system of administrative and political corruption canal irrigation in south india the paper describes how some irrigation engineers raise vast amounts of illicit revenue from the distribution of water and contracts and redistribute part to superior officers and politicians it argues that the corruption system which is centred on control of personnel transfers is an important supply side reason for poor performance of canal irrigated agriculture insofar as the same system operates in other government departments it may be more important for understanding indian politics and the political influences on economic development than has previously been realised

socio ecological explanations for crowding out effects from economic field experiments in southern africa abstract economic and psychological literature mentions three conditions under which the crowding out effect of pro social behaviour is likely to occur and to crowd out citizens moral obligations to behave co operatively i use a framed field experiment on joint extraction from a common pool resource cpr where the crowding out effect has already been reported before in combination with the trust game carried out in farming communities of namibia and south africa to replicate these conditions the research design and the cross cultural setting enable to explicitly control for these effects the results of the experiments support that the crowding out effect depends on the nature of the external intervention controlling vs supportive external intervention the degree of participants self determination high vs low self determination in the group a society s norms of trust and reciprocity high vs low trust within the society the results imply that outside regulations aiming to conserve natural resources risk worsening the situation when neglecting democratic legitimization as well as local community norms

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

the credit effects of monetary policy evidence using loan commitments in addition to the usual channels monetary policy may affect spending by changing the supply of bank loans and the creditworthiness of borrowers this paper tests for these credit effects using a contractual difference across commercial bank loans the author finds that bank loans not made under a commitment slow after tight policy while loans under commitment accelerate or are unchanged this divergence coincides with reports of tighter credit by lenders and by small firms suggesting the divergence reflects a reduction in the supply of credit to the firms without commitments rather than a reduction in their demand for loans

the price puzzle reconsidered abstract a large literature has employed structural vector autoregressive svar models to investigate the empirical effects of u s monetary policy many of these models regularly produce a price puzzle a rise in the aggregate price level in response to a contractionary innovation to monetary policy unless commodity prices are included conventional wisdom maintains that commodity prices resolve the price puzzle because they contain information that helps the federal reserve forecast inflation i examine a number of plausible alternative indicator variables and find little correlation between an ability to forecast inflation and an ability to resolve the price puzzle additionally a sub sample investigation reveals that evidence of a price puzzle is associated primarily with the 1959 1979 sample period and that most indicators including commodity prices cannot resolve the puzzle over this period

collective action for local commons management in rural yunnan china empirical evidence and hypotheses using evolutionary game theory this paper presents hypotheses regarding collective actions for irrigation management with the help of evolutionary game theory data for the analysis were collected by the author from the irrigation system of rural yunnan china an econometric analysis reveals that collective action will be forthcoming in rural communities where few nonfarm job opportunities are provided the degree of income disparity is quite small and resource restrictions are moderately problematic the finding that communities without local government intervention outperform those with intervention supports the proverbial view that external agencies should delegate significant parts of the control rights of common pool resources to immediate stakeholders

water allocation under distribution losses comparing alternative institutions abstract the distribution of water resources is characterized by increasing returns to scale distribution links water generation to its end use standard economic analysis overlooks the interaction among these micro markets generation distribution and end use we compare water allocation when there is market power in each micro market these outcomes are compared with benchmark cases social planning and a competitive business as usual regime simulations suggest that institutions with market power in generation and end use generate significantly higher welfare than the distribution monopoly and the competitive regime however if the policy goal is to maximize the size of the grid a distribution monopoly is preferred

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

deposit rate ceilings and monetary transmission in the us abstract establishing the existence and nature of changes in the conduct and transmission of monetary policy is key in understanding the remarkable macroeconomic performance of the us since the mid 1980s this paper presents evidence on a phenomenon of disintermediation occurring during the major recessions in the 1960s and 1970s but absent ever since and shows that disintermediation is closely linked to the existence of deposit rate ceilings under regulation q in a monetary dsge model that incorporates deposit rate ceilings as occasionally binding constraints the regulation alters the behavior of money aggregates and exacerbates the drop in economic activity following a monetary tightening the results of a threshold var lend support to the main theoretical predictions of the model

the management of common property resources collective action as an alternative to privatisation or state regulation can locally based collective action be a viable way to manage common property resources many writers on collective action and common property are sweepingly pessimistic about the ability of the people who face problems of common property to organize sustainable patterns of use for themselves this paper shows with reference to prisoners dilemma garett hardin s tragedy of the commons and mancur olson s logic of collective action that the analytical basis for this pessimism is weak in many situations of village based common property resource use there can thus be no general presumption that the collective action route to common property resource management will fail any more than there can be a general presumption that it will work the paper suggests a number of general factors to do with the characteristics of the resources the user group and group state relations on which chances of success depend

coordination versus prisoners dilemma implications for international cooperation and regimes the study of political institutions in general and international cooperation in particular has been beneficially influenced by the prisoners dilemma pd game model but there is a mistaken tendency to treat pd as representing the singular problem of collective action and cooperation by relaxing the assumptions of 2 2 games and developing an alternate model of the coordination game i show how some cooperation problems have very different properties from those found in pd the analytical results of the two games are compared across several important dimensions number of strategies available number of iterations of the game numbers of players and the distribution of power among them the discussion is illustrated with specific problems of international cooperation and the implications of alternative cooperation problems for the formation and performance of international regimes are explored the basic solutions for pd and coordination have divergent ramifications for the institutionalization stability and adaptability of regimes and for the role of hegemony in the international system however the coordination model does not replace the pd model but complements and supplements it as a way to understand the diversity of political institutions these results are widely applicable to areas of politics beyond international relations

motivation crowding in environmental protection evidence from an artefactual field experiment abstract this paper examines how motivation crowding and social image affect environmental conservation decisions an artefactual field experiment conducted in bolivia is used to reproduce the trade off between individual and social benefits in natural resource use and test the effect of non monetary and non regulatory incentives on pro social behavior for environmental conservation the results show the presence of a social norm prescribing positive contribution towards environmental protection and that external incentives have heterogeneous effects on pro social behavior depending on how they influence reputation and self image the experimental results differ from those of analogous experiments conducted in the laboratory and are instead consistent with those from field experiments on common pool resource management this fact suggests caution in generalizing conclusions reached in the laboratory to different settings and populations

bayesian methods for dynamic multivariate models if dynamic multivariate models are to be used to guide decisionmaking it is important that probability assessments of forecasts or policy projections be provided when identified bayesian vector autoregression var models are presented with error bands in the existing literature both conceptual and numerical problems have not been dealt with in an internally consistent way in this paper the authors develop methods to introduce prior information in both reduced form and structural var models without introducing substantial new computational burdens their approach makes it feasible to use a single large dynamic framework for example twenty variable models for tasks of policy projections copyright 1998 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

solving the price puzzle with an alternative indicator of monetary policy we identify the effects of monetary policy shocks on macroeconomic variables in vars using the divisia m4 measure of money as the policy indicator variable we obtain theoretically sensible responses whether or not a commodity price index is included thus we eliminate the well known empirical puzzles from the var by a novel choice in a policy variable rather than the usual attachment of an ad hoc variable

the fruits and fallacies of neoliberalism the case of irrigation policy abstract neoliberal doctrine provides the analytic basis for a convincing explanation and critique of irrigation policy in the third world there is a strong case for subjecting capital and recurrent decisions to the discipline of scarcity pricing however it is rarely practicable to apply scarcity pricing rigorously because of the economic and technical infeasibility of volumetric water pricing in most third world irrigation schemes the taiwanese experience illustrates that political and institutional mechanisms for promoting managerial performance can be effective where the neoliberal prescription fails

debt maturity and asymmetric information evidence from default risk changes asymmetric information models suggest that a borrower s choice of debt maturity depends on its private information about its default probabilities that is borrowers with favorable information prefer short term debt while those with unfavorable information prefer long term debt we test this implication by tracing the evolution of debt issuers default risk following debt issuances we find that short term debt issuance leads to a decline inborrowers asset volatility and an increase in their distance to default the opposite is true for long term debt issues the results suggest that borrowers private information about their default risk is an important determinant of their debt maturity choices

governance of the commons a role for the state the paper examines property regimes and common pool resources using examples and case studies the relative merits of private community and state based rights are detailed the insights from the case studies and an analysis of institution costs provide a tentative framework for understanding the role of the state in the governance of the commons

the impact of the 1980 depository institutions deregulation and monetary control act on market value and risk evidence from the capital markets the depository institutions deregulation and monetary control act of 1980 brought about major changes in the banking industry this study employs capital market data to examine the act s impact on the relative competitive positions of distinct classes of firms within the industry the evidence supports the hypothesis that federal reserve system banks profited from the regulatory change at the expense of nonmember banks and savings and loans copyright 1988 by ohio state university press

property relations and economic development the other land reform abstract continued concern for development has led to the suggestion that private property rights should be created to stimulate economic development this suggestion derives from an incomplete understanding of the property relations on the public domain lands in the arid tropics and from a confusion of cause and effect between property and economic productivity a model of the private public boundary in land is developed that challenges the view that wealth would increase if land at the extensive margin were privatized the various types of property regimes in land are defined and explained

loan commitments and optimal monetary policy this paper analyzes how increased reliance on floating rate loan commitments by firms affects the optimal interest rate conditioned monetary policy the analysis uses a stylized poole type is lm structure that explicitly integrates the interaction between credit and goods markets by endogenizing the choice between traditional loans and floating rate commitments the model can analyze interaction between central bank monetary policy decisions and the choice of loan contract types a key implication is that when this joint decision problem is taken into account the separation between the monetary and goods sectors assumed in the standard is lm paradigm breaks down copyright 1990 by ohio state university press

the maturity structure of corporate debt we provide an empirical examination of the determinants of corporate debt maturity our evidence offers strong support for the contracting cost hypothesis firms that have few growth options are large or are regulated have more long term debt in their capital structure we find little evidence that firms use the maturity structure of their debt to signal information to the market the evidence is consistent however with the hypothesis that firms with larger information asymmetries issue more short term debt we find no evidence that taxes affect debt maturity

south south technology transfer the case of china s kpatawee rice project in liberia abstract despite the call for more technical cooperation between developing countries tcdc as spearheaded by the united nations development program the literature contains few examples of actual cases of tcdc kpatawee farm was developed during 1978 1989 by the people s republic of china as a state owned rice seed plantation in rural liberia the article analyzes this experience of tcdc it concludes that technical cooperation between developing countries may offer unexpected problems in this case operating kpatawee as a state farm effectively transferred china s own difficulties with state controlled overmechanized and uneconomic production privatizing kpatawee is unlikely to improve its performance even china s small scale irrigation techniques when considered separately from the rainfed area of the state farm appear at best only marginally competitive with imports and offer limited promise as a viable farming system for rural liberia

some evidence on the empirical significance of credit rationing this paper examines the credit rationing debate using detailed contract information on over one million commercial bank loans from 1977 to 1988 while commercial loan rates are sticky consistent with rationing this stickiness varies with loan contract terms in ways that are not predicted by equilibrium credit rationing theory in addition the proportion of new loans issued under commitment does not increase significantly when credit markets are tight despite the fact that borrowers without commitments can be rationed whereas commitment borrowers are contractually insulated from rationing overall the data suggest that equilibrium rationing is not a significant macroeconomic phenomenon

the market for public office why the indian state is not better at development abstract how and why officials are transferred from one post to another can in india does have far reaching consequences for the effectiveness of public service organizations such as irrigation agriculture forestry and soil conservation departments the transfer mechanism used in many departments of indian states involves a kind of internal labor market a truer market than in the way that term is often used by labor market economists it allows pressures for corrupt behavior to bear down on the incumbents of certain posts and itself amplifies those pressures frequently the pressures on officials to be corrupt cause them to behave in ways contrary to the ostensible objectives of their departments why is the indian state not better at promoting development to an important degree because of the corruption transfer mechanism and its effects on bureaucratic initiatives

economic policy uncertainty and the supply of business loans abstract using a vector autoregressive framework of analysis we show that banks contract their supply of business credit in response to an exogenous increase in economic policy uncertainty this contraction takes two main distinct forms on the one hand banks restrict their supply of spot funds which we document using flows of loans and term loan originations on the other hand banks also curtail their provision of liquidity insurance reducing the amount of new credit lines and embedding in them a pricing structure that reduces the probability of borrowers drawing down on the lines at the peak of the responses we find that a one standard deviation increase in epu causes a contraction in the supply of business loans between 3 and 5 on the extensive margin

cash crops in developing countries the issues the facts the policies the issue of cash crops is profoundly controversial the debate uses different definitions of the term and slides across levels of analysis from the household to the international economy it also cuts across arguments crops countries and time periods this paper sets out to order the debate it deals first with definitions and taxonomy and then reviews issues connected with cash crops and a growth b distribution c food security d dependency and e the environment the paper concludes that with appropriate policies cash crops can offer a route to equitable growth