pricing free bank notes abstract during the pre civil war period us banks issued distinct private monies called bank notes a bank note is a perpetual risky non interest bearing debt claim with the right to redeem on demand at par in specie this paper investigates the pricing of this private money taking into account the enormous changes in technology during the period namely the introduction and rapid diffusion of the railroad a contingent claims pricing model for bank notes is proposed and tested using monthly bank note prices for all banks in north america together with indices of the durations and costs of trips back to issuing banks constructed from pre civil war travelers guides evidence is produced that market participants properly priced the risks inherent in these securities suggesting that wildcat banking was not common because of market discipline

private information deposit interest rates and the stability of the banking system abstract the regulation of deposit interest rates has received little support from economists the same is true for the original rationale for such regulation that bank competition for deposits generates inherent instability in the banking system this paper develops an adverse selection model of banking in which this rationale is correct moreover in this model instability in the banking system can arise despite the presence of a lender of last resort and despite the absence of any need for deposit insurance however in the world described the regulation of deposit interest rates is shown to be an appropriate response to instability in the banking system finally it is argued that adverse selection models of deposit interest rate determination can confront a number of observed phenomena that are not readily explained in other contexts

misintermediation and macroeconomic fluctuations abstract individuals plan consumption and production for different point in the future using interest rates of various maturities as a guide however the financial intermediaries individuals work through traditionally do not match the maturity structure of their assets and liabilities as a result aggregate production plans and aggregate consumption plans for each period in the future need not coincide the resulting discrepancy will eventually appear as a recession or boom involving an unanticipated change in interest rates and production inside the original intertemporal production possibilities frontier maturity transformation is therefore not an essential function of financial intermediation but rather a mis function one which we call misintermediation

assessment of instruments in facilitating investment in off grid renewable energy projects abstract renewable off grid solution plays a critical role in supporting rural electrification however off grid renewable energy ogre project financing faces significant challenges due to limited financing access low affordability of consumers high transactions costs and etc various supporting instruments have been implemented to facilitate ogre investment this study assesses the effectiveness of those instruments with a framework consists of three dimensions feasibility sustainability and replicability the weights of each dimension in the framework and the scores of each instrument are assessed by expert surveys based on the delphi method it is suggested that all the three dimensions should be taken into consideration while assessing the instruments among which feasibility and sustainability are considered as the most important dimensions in the assessment framework furthermore the top 5 most effective instruments in facilitating ogre investment are local engagement in operation and maintenance loan guarantee start up grant end user financing and concessional finance developing countries that need to increase electrification such as most of the asean member states could use these top scored instruments despite of their limited amount of public finance

empirical studies of financial innovation lots of talk little action this paper reviews the extant empirical studies of financial innovation adopting broad criteria we could find only somewhat more than two dozen studies and since some financial innovations are examined by more than one study they cover only seventeen phenomena especially striking is the fact that only two studies offer tests of the broad hypotheses concerning the environmental conditions spurring financial innovation e g regulation taxes unstable macroeconomic conditions and ripe technologies that have been advanced in descriptive articles we offer some tentative conjectures as to why empirical studies of financial innovation are comparatively rare among our suggested culprits is an absence of accessible data we urge financial regulators to undertake more surveys of financial innovation and to make the survey data more available to researchers

money is an experience good competition and trust in the private provision of money the interplay between competition and trust as efficiency enhancing mechanisms in the private provision of money is studied with commitment trust is automatically achieved and competition ensures efficiency without commitment competition plays no role trust does play a role but requires a bound on efficiency stationary inflation must be non negative and therefore the friedman rule cannot be achieved the quality of money can be observed only after its purchasing capacity is realized in this sense money is an experience good

evaluating renewable energy based rural electrification program in western china emerging problems and possible scenarios renewable energy technologies offer an economically viable and environmentally suitable scenario towards addressing energy requirements for rural livelihoods china s renewable energy rural electrification program initiated in 2001 is an effort to employ renewable energy technologies on a large scale for rural electrification the program has been designed with several stages this paper firstly offers an analysis of the problems encountered during the progress of this rural electrification program using data obtained from field survey of representative areas in western china where the first stage of the program was implemented the paper then explores feasible solutions in order to address existing rural energy issues and provide long term reliable energy service for remote communities in support of future course of development of renewable energy application for rural energy demands policy recommendations are provided

has government any role in money abstract recent interest in monetary reform has been sparked by the emergence of a world irredeemable paper money system in light of this interest we review the current validity of four good reasons friedman advanced in 1960 to rationalize government intervention we conclude that the forces that produced government involvement in the past will persist deregulation of financial intermediaries is desirable on grounds of market efficiency though it is an open question whether government should continue as lender of last resort we expect that the present world fiat money standard will neither degenerate into hyperinflation nor revert to a commodity standard

socio economic development and electricity access in developing economies a long run model averaging approach abstract access to electricity continues to be a popular subject in empirical studies however the choice of key factors related to electricity access in the literature to date has been ad hoc due to the lack of a theoretical framework this paper adopts a bayesian model averaging bma approach to selects important factors related to electricity access from 26 socioeconomic indicators using a sample of 48 developing countries and reveal their long term relationship with electricity access the bma approach allows us to identify the optimal empirical model when a theoretical foundation is not available moreover it allows us to address the relative importance of variables using posterior inclusion probabilities and thus has clear policy relevance our results show that access to finance education economic development infrastructure and industrialisation are positively related to electricity access in the long run although the long run relationship does not indicate causality it shows that to maintain this relationship policy adjustments against any deviations from the relationship are needed our study suggests that electrification needs not only economic educational and infrastructural development but also private sector participation governments commitment and political will and integration with poverty reduction and other development schemes

interpreting new evidence about china and u s silver purchases abstract this paper offers a reinterpretation of the influence on china of america s silver policy in the early 1930 s recently compiled evidence about events in china are described and interpreted in light of a model of free banking under a commodity standard our interpretation is that the u s silver purchase program did not set off a chain of bad economic events which eventually forced china off silver and onto a fiat standard rather china was forced off silver by its own government which wanted to make itself the beneficiary of the capital gain associated with the appreciation of silver and to relieve itself of the restrictions that are imposed on government finance by a commodity standard

valuing investment decisions of renewable energy projects considering changing volatility abstract volatility is an important parameter when evaluating investments using the real options method for renewable energy investments the volatility of cash flow continuously changes because as new information and knowledge are gathered there is less foreseen variation this paper proposes an extended recombining trinomial tree model where the changing volatility is used to generate transition probabilities the changing volatility is generated using a consolidation process where multiple random variables including the market price of electricity carbon price and lending rate are integrated into a low dimension stochastic process a two factor learning curve is used to model the changes of investment cost we apply the proposed model to analyze solar photovoltaic pv power generation investment in china the results show volatility with changing feature compared with constant volatility changing volatility may advance investment decisions and change the project value complete grid parity policy in the solar pv industry is infeasible because the opportunity cost brought by the option of delaying cannot be offset the changing volatility may produce a lower and equally effective subsidy level compared with constant volatility a carbon emission trading scheme is helpful in advancing investments in renewable energy which is reflected in improvements in project value advancements in investment decisions and reductions in the required subsidy level

do open market operations matter theory and evidence from the second bank of the united states abstract modigliani miller theorems for open market operations describe conditions under which central bank portfolio rearrangements will have no consequences for allocations relative prices or the time path of the price level such theorems for government owned central banks have limited applicability and hence are difficult to test we develop a modigliani miller theorem for privately owned central banks and test its implications using data from the second bank of the united states the data are consistent with an absence of price level effects due to open market operations and are inconsistent with standard versions of the quantity theory of money

asymmetric information and optimal bank reserves one traditional argument in favor of bank reserve requirements holds that since a b ank and its depositors are asymmetrically informed as to the bank s reserve position and its portfolio the bank will hold too few reserves and too risky a port folio this being the case presumably a central banking authority is equipped t o impose and to monitor a minimal reserve requirement yielding a pareto superior outcome this paper analyzes this position in the context of a formalmodel and shows that at least for some parameters of the model there is such a case for a minimal reserve requirement copyright 1987 by ohio state university press

explaining the demand for free bank notes abstract this paper explains why the risky notes of banks established during the free banking era 1837 1863 were demanded even when relatively safe specie gold and silver coin was an alternative free bank notes were demanded because they were priced to reflect the expected value of their backing the empirical evidence supports this explanation specifically in new york wisconsin and indiana the expected value of backing was sufficient for free bank notes to circulate at par which they did in minnesota the backing for notes was very poor they exchanged well below par being treated as small denomination securities

wind electricity in denmark a survey of policies their effectiveness and factors motivating their introduction this paper surveys the development of the policies supporting the introduction of wind electricity in denmark in the last 15 years with special attention to the new policy introduced after a 2 year long debate the aim of this paper is to explore the roles of financial support policy certainty and planning constraints in the diffusion of wind electricity in denmark and the reasons prompting the change of the system in the current decade it is discovered that political uncertainty has badly affected the effectiveness of the feed in law in the years immediately after its introduction with regard to the new system it is concluded that the change has been prompted by generous conditions under the feed in law and by the desire to facilitate the modernisation of old turbines it is also concluded that incentive based systems can be more effective than tradable quotas in promoting the modernisation of renewable plants this finding is relevant to the development of energy policy in countries such as germany and spain where the average age of wind turbines is much younger than those existing in denmark

the emancipation proclamation confederate expectations and the price of southern bank notes we examine the behavior of a semimonthly series of the confederate dollar price of bank notes these notes traded at par with confederate dollars from october of 1861 until november 5 1862 we use a model of the demand for two currencies to argue that this departure from par results from altered southern expectations after the 1862 congressional elections assured the enactment of the emancipation proclamation previously southerners believed a win or a negotiated settlement would allow a return to the union intact when these expectations changed bank notes appreciated against confederate dollars in addition our empirical work shows that notes appreciated following northern victories

solvency regulations and the management of banking risks abstract in the recent years international banking authorities have succeeded implementing harmonized solvency regulations however two stages can be distinguished 1 up to 1993 a rigid approach has prevailed with the cooke ratio for credit risks and the standardized approach to market risks 2 since then a movement towards flexibility has been acknowledged notably with the validation of internal models of the var type and the precommitment proposal of kupiec and o brien the objective of this article is to discuss the pros and cons of these different approaches within a coherent conceptual framework that applies contract theory to the regulation of banking

bank panics government guarantees and the long run size of the financial sector evidence from free banking america governments attempt to increase the confidence of financial market participants by making implicit or explicit guarantees of uncertain credibility confidence in these guarantees presumably alters the size of the financial sector but observing the long run consequences of failed guarantees is difficult we look to america s free banking era and compare the consequences of a broken guarantee during the indiana centered panic of 1854 to the panic of 1857 in which guarantees were honored our estimates of a model of endogenous market structure indicate substantial negative long run consequences to financial depth when panics cast doubt upon a government s ability to honor its guarantees

the causes of free bank failures a detailed examination abstract in this paper we propose and test a new explanation of bank behavior during the free banking era 1837 1863 arguing against the conventional view that free bank failures were due to wildcat banking we claim they were caused by falling asset prices confronting both explanations with our new and detailed data set developed from state auditor reports we find that the falling asset price explanation of free bank failures explains far more failures than does the wildcatting hypothesis