Search

In this study, we examine the effects of mandatory IFRS adoption on accounting-based prediction models of CDS spreads for a sample of 292 firms in 16 countries. In our examination, we estimate the models for both financial and nonfinancial firms before and after mandatory IFRS adoption. We find that mean and median absolute percentage prediction errors are larger for both financial and non-financial firms after mandatory IFRS adoption. We also estimate accounting-based prediction models of CDS spreads separately for financial and non-financial US firms as a benchmark. Although US firms also show an increase in the mean and median absolute percentages of prediction errors over the same period, our findings from regressions that use a difference-in-difference design indicate that the increase is significantly greater for firms in countries that adopted IFRS mandatorily. We also find that in the post-adoption period, prediction errors are larger for firms in countries with weaker institutions such as low levels of property rights and more restrictive access to credit.

This paper examines employee flows and the association with firm earnings and interest rates. We use administrative employer–employee matched panel data from Denmark spanning 17 years and hence exploit actual data on employee arrivals (labor inflows) and departures (labor outflows). Three main findings emerge. First, we condition by firms’ economic conditions. Departures predict earnings increases for prior-year loss firms, while they predict earnings decreases for prior-year profit firms, suggesting that this conditioning can help explain the mixed results in the literature. Arrivals predict earnings increases, though only for prior-year profit firms. These effects are stronger for high-paid employees than for low-paid ones. Second, the effects of departures are generally larger than the effects of arrivals, consistent with departures disrupting operations. Third, we find that lenders price employee flow information but only for departures of high-paid employees, despite the predictive ability of the flow of other employees for future earnings. Overall our results suggest that employee flows predict firm financial performance but are only partially priced by lenders.

World banking systems are almost invariably populated by relatively diverse financial institutions. This paper studies the operation of credit markets where heterogeneous banks compete for investment projects of varying quality in the presence of informational asymmetries. We emphasize on two dimensions of heterogeneity – access to project-specific information vis-à-vis funding costs – which naturally reflect lenders’ comparative disadvantages in the competitive landscape. Two main findings stand out. First, competition across heterogeneous banks can produce multiple equilibria. Thus, economies with similar fundamentals may well display a variety of interest rates and/or market shares for the operating institutions. Second, market failures (overlending) always prove mitigated in heterogeneous banking systems, relative to a world with equally uninformed lenders. This discipline effect however comes with a chance for market fragility, whereby modest changes in the business environment or other fundamentals can trigger large shifts in the price of credit, leading to either highly selective markets or rather ones which overfund ventures of the lowest quality. Extensions of the basic model and some policy implications are also discussed.

Non-profit organizations (NPOs), such as financial cooperatives, have a longstanding tradition in advanced market economies. We develop a model of ‘mixed credit markets’ where pure for-profit institutions (e.g. commercial banks) can coexist with financial NPOs which feature a concern for inter-member surplus redistribution (e.g. credit cooperatives) and enjoy privileged borrower-specific information vis-à-vis their for-profit peers, while facing higher funding costs. We formally investigate market competition between the two alternative financial organizations both offering contracts whose terms entail cross subsidization. We argue that heterogeneity in organizational models can explain stable coexistence under competitive conditions, and also help us interpret the variety of market outcomes — in terms of e.g. overall coverage and market shares — as documented in modern financial systems. Importantly, the viability of redistribution-oriented NPOs is shown not to rest on under-investment issues or concerns about market power, for they can successfully operate in markets where credit rationing never arises.

The purpose of this document is to analyze, based on technological criteria, regulatory standards and international recommendations, the impact of blockchain technology on credit markets and how such dynamics could have direct effects on Latin American markets, i.e., producing greater efficiency and financial inclusion in the region. For this purpose, the scope of blockchain technology will be contextualized, the possible applications of said technology in the financial markets will be developed, and finally the regulatory proposals on the application of said technology in the Latin American credit markets will be analyzed in relation to risk management and financial inclusion. La finalidad de este documento es analizar, a partir de criterios tecnológicos, estándares regulatorios y recomendaciones internacionales, el impacto de la tecnología blockchain en los mercados de crédito y cómo dicha dinámica podría tener efectos directos en los mercados latinoamericanos, a saber, producir mayor eficiencia e inclusión financiera en la región. Para tal fin, se contextualizará el alcance de la tecnología blockchain, se desarrollarán las posibles aplicaciones de dicha tecnología en los mercados financieros y, por último, se analizarán las propuestas regulatorias sobre la aplicación de dicha tecnología en los mercados de crédito latinoamericanos en lo relacionado con la administración de riesgos e inclusión financiera.

We study how an employment-related outside option affects equilibrium properties of credit markets plagued with asymmetric information, when returns to entrepreneurial ventures are ranked by first-order stochastic dominance. While greater separation of expected payoffs in paid employment than in entrepreneurship may involve credit rationing or market breakdown, a lemons problem in the outside option may produce multiple competitive equilibria, each featuring favorable selection in the credit market. Under these circumstances, informational asymmetries will not prevent high-ability individuals from pursuing entrepreneurship and yet induce more investment than is socially efficient. This prediction is consistent with recent empirical evidence on the relative importance of rationing vis-a-vis over-provision for credit seeking, informationally opaque firms.

Ohne Geburtsurkunde kein Personalausweis, ohne Ausweis kein Zugang zu Finanzdienstleistungen - dieser Zusammenhang mag in Industrieländern als trivial erscheinen. Die gleichberechtigte Teilhabe am ökonomischen Leben scheitert hier nicht an fehlenden Ausweisdokumenten. In vielen Entwicklungsländern hingegen bleibt der Zugang zu Finanzdienstleistungen verwehrt, weil eine einfache Grundvoraussetzung wie die zweifelsfreie Kundenidentifikation nicht erfüllt werden kann. Diese basiert auf der Sorgfaltspflicht, welche Banken durch internationale Anti-Geldwäsche-Richtlinien auferlegt wird. In vielen Entwicklungs- und Schwellenländern haben insbesondere arme Menschen keinerlei Möglichkeit in den Besitz von amtlichen Ausweisdokumenten zu gelangen, da ein großer Teil der Bevölkerung bei Geburt nicht registriert wird. Die Geburtsurkunde ist aber notwendige Vorraussetzung für die Ausstellung von Personalausweisen, welche für die Legitimationsprüfung bei der Bank benötigt werden. Das Problem der Identifizierung hat bislang in der Forschung über den Zugang zu Finanzdienstleistungen keine prominente Rolle gespielt. In der Vergangenheit konzentrierte sich die Aufmerksamkeit vor allem auf Mikrofinanzierung . Um den Zugang zu formalen Finanzdienstleistungen zu erhöhen, müssen neue Verfahren der Kundenidentifikation entwickelt werden, die den Realitäten der Entwicklungsländer entsprechen. Erste Ansätze, die erfolgreich einem Teil der armen Bevölkerung den Zugang eröffnen, sind in Ländern wie Indien und Südafrika bereits erkennbar. Notwendig ist auch die Einführung von Basisfinanzprodukten, wie Kleinstkonten, welche auf einer stärkeren Spreizung der risiko-orientierten Identifizierung basieren. Diese Spreizung sollte international anerkannt und festgeschrieben werden, um Maßnahmen in diesem Bereich aus der rechtlichen Grauzone zu holen.

Der Wettbewerb unter Kreditauskunfteien in Deutschland hat sich in den vergangenen Jahren stark intensiviert. Auskunfteien sammeln persönliche Daten über Verbraucher, die von Kreditinstituten, Leasing- und Telekommunikationsunternehmen, aber auch von Handelsfirmen sowie Energieversorgern gemeldet werden. Aus dem umfassenden Datenbestand der Auskunfteien werden mittels statistischer Scoring- Verfahren Risiken prognostiziert, die den individuellen Umgang mit Krediten oder Versicherungen betreffen. Der Handel mit den Kundenprofilen floriert - mit entsprechenden Auswirkungen auf die gesetzlich geschützte Privatsphäre. Datensammlung, - analyse und -verkauf sind für Betroffene oft nicht mehr nachzuvollziehen. Jetzt soll eine Novellierung des Bundesdatenschutzgesetzes durch die Ausweitung der Informations- und Auskunftsrechte von Verbrauchern mehr Transparenz schaffen. Ein Blick über die Grenzen zeigt, dass dies nur ein erster Schritt zu mehr Transparenz der Datenverarbeitung und höherem Schutz von Verbrauchern im immer intensiveren Wettbewerb der Auskunfteien sein kann.

We measure the consequences of asymmetric information and imperfect competition in the Italian lending market. We show that banks' optimal price response to an increase in adverse selection varies with competition. Exploiting matched data on loans and defaults, we estimate models of demand for credit, loan use, pricing, and firm default. We find evidence of adverse selection and evaluate its importance. While indeed prices rise in competitive markets and decline in concentrated ones, the former effect dominates, suggesting that while market power can mitigate the adverse effects of asymmetric information, mainstream concerns about its effects survive with imperfect competition.

What should monetary policymakers do when the policy rate is effectively at zero? Several colleagues and I have released a working paper that we hope will contribute to the ongoing debate on this question.

Quite apart from the question of the justifiability – based on prior normative commitments – of legal rules controlling the substance of contractual exchange, such as a fair price rule, a common co ...

Over the past dozen years, policymakers have largely abandoned long-standing popular approaches for addressing risk in agriculture without fully resolving the question of how best to manage the negative consequences of volatile agricultural markets. The article reviews the transition from past policies and describes current approaches that distinguish between the trade-related fiscal consequences of commodity market volatility and the consequences of price and production risks for vulnerable rural households and communities. Current policies rely more heavily on markets, even though markets for risk are incomplete in numerous ways. The benefits and limitations of market-based instruments are examined in the context of risk management strategies, and innovative approaches to extend the reach of risk markets are discussed.

We partnered with a micro-lender in Mali to randomize credit offers at the village level. Then, in no-loan control villages, we gave cash grants to randomly selected households. These grants led to higher agricultural investments and profits, thus showing that liquidity constraints bind with respect to agricultural investment. In loan-villages, we gave grants to a random subset of farmers who (endogenously) did not borrow. These farmers have lower – in fact zero – marginal returns to the grants. Thus we find important heterogeneity in returns to investment and strong evidence that farmers with higher marginal returns to investment self-select into lending programs.

The investment decisions of small-scale farmers in developing countries are conditioned by their financial environment. Binding credit market constraints and incomplete insurance can limit investment in activities with high expected profits. We conducted several experiments in northern Ghana in which farmers were randomly assigned to receive cash grants, grants of or opportunities to purchase rainfall index insurance, or a combination of the two. Demand for index insurance is strong, and insurance leads to significantly larger agricultural investment and riskier production choices in agriculture. The binding constraint to farmer investment is uninsured risk: when provided with insurance against the primary catastrophic risk they face, farmers are able to find resources to increase expenditure on their farms. Demand for insurance in subsequent years is strongly increasing with the farmer’s own receipt of insurance payouts, with the receipt of payouts by others in the farmer’s social network and with recent poor rain in the village. Both investment patterns and the demand for index insurance are consistent with the presence of important basis risk associated with the index insurance, imperfect trust that promised payouts will be delivered and overweighting recent events.

This article illustrates the impact of Jewish lenders on private credit markets and public finance in medieval and Renaissance Italian towns. In Tuscan private credit markets, Jewish lending helped households to smooth consumption, buy working capital, and provide dowries for daughters. Jewish lenders also helped the public fmances of the communes in which they resided. This article shows that public-finance considerations affected the choice of the interest-rate ceiling Jews were allowed to charge. In many instances, the communes raised the interest-rate ceiling for Jewish lenders in order to tax or borrow the proceeds.

I address the following issue in this paper: how does information sharing among banks about borrowers affect banks' competition, and ultimately, the interest rate borrowers pay for the loan they take? One would expect that full information sharing among banks reduces lenders' risk and results in lower lending rates than any other arrangement. This may be the reason why regulators of the banking industry would like to see full information sharing in most countries. I shall show below that the regulators' expectation is usually not fulfilled. Full information sharing will result in higher lending rates than any other form of information sharing under fairly general conditions. Despite its lucrative features, banks are not always keen on supporting full information sharing. Information sharing only about bad borrowers is the fully rational banks' dominant strategy if the proportion of bad borrowers is substantial. Myopic banks would opt for no information sharing if the proportion of bad borrowers is large. Fully rational banks would only choose full information sharing if the share of bad borrowers is small. Borrowers with good credit records, on the other hand, would prefer information sharing only about bad customers rather than full or no information sharing, for they pay lower interest rates under a black list than with any other form of information sharing or with no information sharing.

In many countries, taxes on businesses are less progressive than labor income taxes. This paper provides a justification for this pattern based on adverse selection that entrepreneurs face in credit markets. Individuals choose between becoming entrepreneurs or workers and differ in their skill in both of these occupations. I find that endogenous cross-subsidization in the credit market equilibrium results in excessive (insufficient) entry of low-skilled (high-skilled) agents into entrepreneurship. This gives rise to a corrective role for differential taxation of entrepreneurial profits and labor income. In particular, a profit tax that is regressive relative to taxes on labor income restores the efficient occupational choice.

The literature suggests Conditional Cash Transfers (CCT) and remittances may protect poor households from income risk. We present a theoretical framework that explores how this ‘insurance’ effect can change households’ decision to apply for a loan via changes in credit demand and supply. Empirical evidence from poor rural households in Nicaragua shows CCTs did not affect loan requests while remittances increased them. The risk protection provided by remittances seems stronger, relative to CCTs, such that improvements on borrowers’ expected marginal returns to a loan or on creditworthiness more than offset decreasing returns to additional income. This suggests those transfers that best protect households from income risk favor financial deepening in the context of segmented markets.

This paper studies the determinants of inequality in an infnitehorizon general equilibrium model. Missing capital markets decreases motivations for capital accumulation among the poor, while uncertainty about future income leads to precautionary savings. The different returns to saving faced by agents with different levels of wealth, caused by missing capital markets, lead to two-peaked wealth distributions and high inequality. The precautionary savings, affected by the level of labor market risk, infuences the degree of polarization in the wealth distribution, as poor agents in particular save more if the income process is more volatile. With low risk, there are two distinct population groups: the poor and the rich. There is no mobility between groups, and the wealth distribution is history dependent. With high risk, there is mobility between groups and a unique steady state wealth distribution. When comparing steady states with high and low risk, the wage level is higher in the high-risk steady states because of precautionary saving. The wage may in fact be so much higher that the poor are better off in the high-risk steady states, even though the income process is more volatile. The rich are worse off with high risk, as the price paid for labor is higher.

Does it matter, for the size of the government spending multiplier, which category of agents bears the brunt of the necessary adjustment in taxes? In an economy with heterogeneous agents and imperfect financial markets, the answer depends on whether or not New Keynesian features, such are price rigidity, are present. If prices are flexible, the tax-financing rule is either neutral or leads to a larger multiplier when taxes are levied on the borrowing constrained agents. If prices are sticky, the multiplier is larger when taxes are levied on the unconstrained agents. We discuss the conditions under which these results hold. Furthermore, we study the real effects of fiscal expansions via pure, revenue-neutral, tax redistributions.

(english) This paper investigates the dynamics of the informal sector in Madagascar during a period of fragile growth. Overall, the behavior of informal firms in terms of earnings, employment and capital accumulation points to a degree of heterogeneity which goes beyond a simple dualistic model and even a more refined model that would distinguish between an upper entrepreneurial and a lower subsistence tier within the informal sector. However, in line with the dualistic model, the informal sector indeed fulfils a labor absorbing function in times of crisis. During the growth period we see capital accumulation in most of the sectors and lots of evidence that households expand their activities. However, this happens mainly through the creation of new firms instead of the expansion of existing ones, which is consistent with much higher returns at very low levels of capital. More rapid expansion can be observed in sectors that operate with lower capital intensity, which is also consistent with risk or credit constraints as major deterrents to expansion. While there is some indication that total factor productivity increased over time, returns to capital and labor where not higher at the end of the observation period than at the beginning. Returns are also rather low at high levels of capital. These findings point to a limited growth potential of the informal sector as a whole. The heterogeneity in capital returns hints at large inefficiencies in allocating capital across informal firms. _________________________________ (français) Cet article examine la dynamique du secteur informel à Madagascar pendant une période de croissance fragile. Le comportement des firmes informelles en termes de revenus, d’emploi et d’accumulation du capital suggère un degré d’hétérogénéité allant au-delà du modèle dualiste classique, et même d’un modèle plus fin distinguant, au sein du secteur informel, un segment entrepreneurial et un segment de subsistance. Cependant, conformément au modèle dualiste, le secteur informel a absorbé le surplus de travail en temps de crise. Pendant la période de croissance, on constate une accumulation de capital dans la plupart des secteurs d’activité et une expansion des activités des ménages. Ceci se traduit pourtant principalement par la création de nouvelles firmes plutôt que par la croissance de firmes existantes, en lien avec des rendements beaucoup plus élevés à des faibles niveaux de capital. Une expansion plus rapide peut être observée dans les secteurs à faible intensité capitalistique, ce qui tend également à confirmer que le risque et les contraintes de crédit sont des obstacles à l’expansion. Alors que les résultats montrent que la productivité totale des facteurs a augmenté, les rendements du capital et du travail ne sont pas plus élevés à la fin de la période étudiée qu’au début. Les rendements sont également plutôt faibles à des niveaux élevés de capital. Ces résultats indiquent un potentiel de croissance globalement limité des firmes informelles. Enfin, l’hétérogénéité des rendements du capital plaide en faveur d’une allocation sous-optimale du capital dans le secteur informel.

We present a model with adverse selection where information sharing between lenders arises endogenously. Lenders' incentives to share information about borrowers are positively related to the mobility and heterogeneity of borrowers, to the size of the credit market, and to advances in information technology; such incentives are instead reduced by the fear of competition from potential entrants. In addition, information sharing increases the volume of lending when adverse selection is so severe that safe borrowers drop out of the market. These predictions are supported by international and historical evidence in the context of the consumer credit market. A LARGE BODY OF literature on credit markets has shown that asymmetric information may prevent the efficient allocation of lending, leading to credit rationing (e.g., Jaffee and Russell (1976), Stiglitz and Weiss (1981)) or to a wedge between lending and borrowing rates (e.g., King 1986)). In this literature informational asymmetries are taken to be exogenous: lenders fail to observe some relevant characteristic or action of potential borrowers and have no way of learning about it. In some countries, however, lenders can improve their knowledge about new customers by exchanging information with other lenders through information brokers, generally known as "credit bureaus." The latter collect, file, and distribute the information voluntarily supplied by their members, and operate on the principle of reciprocity: lenders who do not provide data are denied access to the bureau's files. In other countries, instead, these institutions do not exist. The literature offers no guide to identify the factors that lead to endogenous communication between lenders. This paper is an attempt to fill the gap. Information sharing is important for a number of reasons: it may increase the degree of competitiveness within credit markets (Vives (1990)), improve

We analyze a standard environment of adverse selection in credit markets. In our environment, entrepreneurs who are privately informed about the quality of their projects need to borrow in order to invest. Conventional wisdom says that, in this class of economies, the competitive equilibrium is typically inefficient. We show that this conventional wisdom rests on one implicit assumption: entrepreneurs can only access monitored lending. If a new set of markets is added to provide entrepreneurs with additional funds, efficiency can be attained in equilibrium. An important characteristic of these additional markets is that lending in them must be unmonitored, in the sense that it does not condition total borrowing or investment by entrepreneurs. This makes it possible to attain efficiency by pooling all entrepreneurs in the new markets while separating them in the markets for monitored loans.

This paper reports the findings of Granger causality tests on the relationship between foreign direct investment (henceforth, FDI) and local financial market development across 62 countries from 1996 to 2007. In this paper we explore whether local financial market development is important in catalyzing the flow of foreign direct investment. findings results are robust to different measures of financial market development. Furthermore, the results indicate that most of the causal links are found in Non OECD, Low income and Lower middle Income countries.

We study how monetary policy affects bank lending behavior with an unique database and an event-study approach. Using the daily frequencies of interest rates and new loans in our data as a source of identification, we estimate banks´ reactions to monetary policy committee (Copom) decisions and to announcements of reserve requirement changes. We argue that these estimated reduced-form coefficients can be interpreted as supply shifts. The behavior of the estimates corroborates the claim that we capture supply movements, since new loans depends negatively on unexpected basic interest rate and reserve requirements changes, and the opposite is true for the lending interest rate. Evidence suggests that banking lending channel is unimportant. Results are robust to using different bank characteristics to define financial constraint, to the monetary policy instrument - basic interest rates or reserve requirement -, and to the measure of monetary policy stance.

After a period of relative marginalization, development economics has now reemerged into the mainstream of most economics departments, attracting some of the brightest talents in the field. It is no longer the preserve of development "experts" who pronounce on the strange ways of the world outside high-income countries, but instead serves as a testing ground for fundamental economic theories and the source of exciting new ideas. This situation is, of course, not entirely new. Innovative theoretical ideas from people such as George Akerlof and Joseph Stiglitz were inspired by thinking about the developing world. Pranab Bardhan and T. N. Srinivasan, and, slightly later, Angus Deaton and Mark Rosenzweig also resisted the compartmentalization of economics into development and the rest. Nevertheless, the extent to which, today, economists in many other fields routinely think about the application of their ideas and techniques in devel opment contexts, seems unprecedented. This new centrality is excellent news for the field and, we venture to hope, for the world it studies. We believe that one of the reasons for the field's vitality is the opportunity it offers to integrate theoretical thinking and empirical testing, and the rich dialogue that can potentially take place between the two. The culture of development

Financial intermediation and bank spreads are important elements in the analysis of business cycle transmission and monetary policy. We present a simple framework that introduces lending relationships, a relevant feature of financial intermediation that has been so far neglected in the monetary economics literature, into a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with staggered prices and cost channels. Our main findings are: (i) banking spreads move countercyclically generating amplified output responses, (ii) spread movements are important for monetary policy making even when a standard Taylor rule is employed (iii) modifying the policy rule to include a banking spread adjustment improves stabilization of shocks and increases welfare when compared to rules that only respond to output gap and inflation, and finally (iv) the presence of strong lending relationships in the banking sector can lead to indeterminacy of equilibrium forcing the central bank to react to spread movements.

We examine a general equilibrium model with collateral constraints and increasing returns to scale in production. The utility function is nonseparable, with no income eect on the consumer's choice of leisure. Unlike this model without a collateral constraint, we …nd that indeterminacy of equilibria is possible. Hence, business cycles can be driven by self-ful…lling expectations. This is the case for more realistic parametrizations than in previous, similar models without these features. � Keywords: Business cycles, Credit markets, Collateral Constraint, Sunspots. JEL

Using a general equilibrium model with private R&D financing, this article investigates the impact of trade openness to trade on growth and on welfare for two countries equal in all aspects, except for the quality of credit markets. We show that opening to trade increases growth in the country with better credit markets (North) and decreases it in the other country (South). With respect to trade pattern, South imports high tech goods and exports traditional goods. In terms of welfare, opening to trade may lower the welfare of individuals in the short run, but in the long run all of them are better o¤ under free trade than if they were under autarky.

The recent global economic downturn in a number of economies was preceded by rising credit market risk brought on by a massive financial market failure. This paper develops a small open economy model that analyzes the interaction of business cycle volatilities with capital accumulation and the subsequent impacts on economic growth. We use a stochastic dynamic programming model to test the central hypothesis that rising volatility shocks is an inhibitor to capital accumulation and subsequently economic growth. The model illustrates that traditional capital-based growth models which assume a constant capital stock are not consistent with the business cycle variation in capital accumulation. Furthermore, it appears that an increase in precautionary savings arising from a stochastic shock does not completely translate into productive capital investment need for growth, since risk-averse households will seek out risk-free government or foreign assets. We find this conclusion consistent with the empirical findings of Ramey et al (1995) and Badinger (2009) who both argued that, business cycle volatility is important to the growth discussion because of its robust net negative effect on output growth.

This paper explores the consequences of creating and improving property rights so that fixed assets can be used as collateral. This has become a cause célèbre of Hernando de Soto whose views are influential in debates about policy reform concerning property rights. Hence, we refer to the economic impact of such reforms as the de Soto effect. We explore the logic of the argument for credit contracts, both in isolation, and in market equilibrium. We show that the impact will vary with the degree of market competition. Where competition is weak, it is possible that borrowers will be worse off when property rights improve. We discuss the implications for optimal policy and the political economy of policy reform.

Information asymmetries are important in theory but difficult to identify in practice. We estimate the empirical importance of adverse selection and moral hazard in a consumer credit market using a new field experiment methodology. We randomized 58,000 direct mail offers issued by a major South African lender along three dimensions: 1) the initial "offer interest rate" appearing on direct mail solicitations; 2) a "contract interest rate" equal to or less than the offer interest rate and revealed to the over 4,000 borrowers who agreed to the initial offer rate; and 3) a dynamic repayment incentive that extends preferential pricing on future loans to borrowers who remain in good standing. These three randomizations, combined with complete knowledge of the Lender's information set, permit identification of specific types of private information problems. Specifically, our setup distinguishes adverse selection from moral hazard effects on repayment, and thereby generates unique evidence on the existence and magnitudes of specific credit market failures. We find evidence of both adverse selection (among women) and moral hazard (predominantly among men), and the findings suggest that about 20% of default is due to asymmetric information problems. This helps explain the prevalence of credit constraints even in a market that specializes in financing high-risk borrowers at very high rates.

This paper exploits a panel dataset comprising 1,565 banks in 20 emerging countries during 1989- 2001 and compares the response of the volume of loans and the rates on loans and deposits to various measures of monetary conditions across domestic and foreign banks. It also looks for systematic differences in the behavior of domestic and foreign banks during periods of financial distress and tranquil times. Using differences in bank ownership as a proxy for financial constraints, the paper finds weak evidence that foreign banks have a lower sensitivity of credit to monetary conditions relative to their domestic competitors, with the differences driven by banks with lower asset liquidity and/or capitalization. The lending and deposit rates of foreign banks tend to be smoother during periods of financial distress. However, the differences across domestic and foreign banks do not appear to be strong. These results provide weak support to the existence of supply-side effects in credit markets and suggest that foreign bank entry in emerging countries may have contributed somewhat to stability in credit markets.

This paper explores determinants of mortgage default, enlightening the transmission mechanisms between the economic cycle, institutional arrangements and the microeconomic event of individual default. It revises the scope and limitations of standard credit-scoring models, that is those generic classification models used by banks to discriminate good from bad debtors. Starting from a microeconomic model of mortgage default, it is shown that there will be some level of strategic defaults, even in a hypothetical world in which standard Credit-Scoring models work perfectly. That means a specification error in standard models, which only capture the solvency-tied fundamentals of repayment, but no the strategic ones triggered by macroeconomic and institutional factors. Some alternative methods and policy measures are suggested.

Personal bankruptcies in the United States have increased dramatically, rising from 1.4 per thousand working age population in 1970 to 8.5 in 2002. We use a heterogeneous agent life-cycle model with competitive financial intermediaries who can observe households’ earnings, age and current asset holdings to evaluate several commonly oered explanations. We find that an increase in uncertainty (income shocks, expense uncertainty) cannot quantitatively account for the rise in bankruptcies. Instead, stories related to a change in the credit market environment are more plausible. In particular, we find that a combination of a decrease in the credit market transactions cost together with a decline in “stigma” does a good job in accounting for the rise in consumer bankruptcy. We also argue that the abolition of usury laws and other legal changes have played little role.

By shrinking the available menu of loan contracts, asymmetric information can result in two types of nonprice rationing in credit markets. The first is conventional quantity rationing. The second is 'risk rationing.' Risk rationed agents are able to borrow, but only under relatively high collateral contracts that offer them lower expected well-being than a safe, reservation rental activity. Like quantity rationed agents, credit markets do not perform well for the risk rationed. While the incidence of conventional quantity rationing is straightforward (low wealth agents who cannot meet minimum endogenous collateral requirements are quantity rationed), the incidence of risk rationing is less straightforward. Increases in financial wealth, holding productive wealth constant, counter intuitively result in the poor becoming entrepreneurs and the wealthy becoming workers. While this counterintuitive puzzle has been found in the literature on wealth effects in principal-agent models, we show that a more intuitive pattern of risk rationing results if we consider increases in productive wealth. Empirical evidence drawn from four country studies corroborates the implications of the analysis, showing that agents with low levels of productive wealth are risk rationed, and that their input and output levels mimic those of low productivity quantity rationed firms.

This occasional paper explains why the bank lending survey was developed by the ECB and describes its main features. It discusses the importance of credit developments for both the economy and the functioning of monetary policy, and further clarifies why the survey was introduced. Furthermore, the paper demonstrates that the value added of implementing a bank lending survey for the euro area lies in particular in the way it provides greater insight into developments in credit standards, non-interest rate credit conditions and terms, the risk perception of banks and the willingness of banks to lend. Credit standards are the internal guidelines or criteria of a bank which reflect the bank’s loan policy. The terms and conditions of a loan refer to the specific obligations agreed upon by the lender and the borrower. This occasional paper also considers similar surveys conducted by the Federal Reserve System in the US and by the Bank of Japan.

The number of firm bankruptcies is surprisingly low in economies with poor institutions. We study a model of bank-firm relationship and show that the bank’s decision to liquidate bad firms has two opposing effects. First, the bank receives a payoff if a firm is liquidated. Second, it loses the rent from incumbent customers that is due to its informational advantage. We show that institutions must improve significantly in order to yield a stable equilibrium in which the optimal number of firms is liquidated. There is also a range where improving institutions may decrease the number of bad firms liquidated.

Microfinance supports mainly informal activities that often have a low return and low market demand. It may therefore be hypothesized that the aggregate poverty impact of microfinance is modest or even nonexistent. If true, the poverty impact of microfinance observed at the participant level represents either income redistribution or short run income generation from the microfinance intervention. This article examines the effects of microfinance on poverty reduction at both the participant and the aggregate levels using panel data from Bangladesh. The results suggest that access to microfinance contributes to poverty reduction, especially for female participants, and to overall poverty reduction at the village level. Microfinance thus helps not only poor participants but also the local economy.

Researchers have incorporated labor or credit market frictions in isolation within simple neoclassical models to open up a role for institutions, inject realism into their models and examine the impact of these distortions on output and employment. We present an overlapping generations model with production in which a labor market friction (moral hazard) coexists with a credit market friction (costly state verification). The simultaneous presence and interaction of these two frictions is studied. Our main results are: (i) while credit market frictions affect real activity and employment both in the short and long run, labor market frictions typically have only short-run effects unless they also affect the volume of investment per worker, (ii) the two frictions amplify each other to produce higher long-run unemployment than would result from only labor market frictions, (iii) these distortions have the ability to prolong the effect of temporary shocks, and (iv) the dynamical properties of economies with both frictions are, somewhat surprisingly, qualitatively similar to their frictionless counterparts.

Emerging market crises are characterized by large swings in both macroeconomic fundamentals and asset prices. The economic significance of observed movements in macroeconomic variables is obscured by the brief and extreme nature of crises. In this paper we propose to study the macroeconomic consequences of crises by studying the behavior of "effective" fundamentals, constructed by studying the relative movements of stock prices during crises. We find that these effective fundamentals provide a different picture than that implied by observed fundamentals. First, asset prices often reflect expectations of improvement in fundamentals after the initial devaluations; specifically, effective depreciations are positive but not as large as the observed ones. Second, crises vary in their effect on credit market conditions, with investors expecting tightening of credit in some cases (Mexico 1994, Philippines 1997), but loosening of credit in others (Sweden 1992, Korea 1997, Brazil 1999).

The Riegle-Neal Act in the US and the Economic and Monetary Union in Europe are recent initiatives to stimulate financial integration.These initiatives allow new entrants to "poach" the incumbents' clients by offering them attractive loan offers.We show that these deregulations may be insuficient since asymmetric information seriously hampers the integration of credit markets.This asymmetry stems from the informational advantage incumbent banks have about their current clients vis-a-vis potential entrants.More-over, banks may strategically display some information hindering entry when asymmetric information is moderate.We also show that voluntary information sharing emerges only when asymmetric information is low.

This paper investigates how initial inequality can causally affect economic growth when moral hazard problems exist in credit markets.Two regimes of the credit markets aiming at overcoming the moral hazard problems are analyzed.The formal one such as bank relies on intermediary between borrowers and lenders by asking for collateral.The informal one relies on direct yet costly monitoring by the lenders themselves.However, from the social point of view both of them are unfavorable to certain segments of the agents in this heterogenous economy in terms of whether the individual potential productivity could be fully realized. Consequently, the permission of the coexistence of these two regimes could be growth enhancing.The dynamic rise and fall of the formal and informal regimes are implied along the growth process of per capita income.In the empirical part, the negative relationship between initial inequality and long run growth is discovered, using cross-province data in rural China rather than more often used cross-country data sets in literature.Interestingly, the policy dummy variable telling the permission or forbidding of the informal regime presents a positive sign.Both of these two results support our theoretical model empirically. Finally, we argue that this channel to bridge inequality and economic growth is more rural specific.

This paper develops a model of the choice between bank and market finance by entrepreneurial firms that differ in the value of their net worth. The monitoring associated with bank finance ameliorates a moral hazard problem between the entrepreneurs and their lenders. The model is used to analyze the different strands of the credit view of the transmission of monetary policy. In particular, we derive the empirical implications of a broad credit channel, and compare them to those obtained when the model is extended to incorporate some elements of the bank lending channel.

This dissertation is a collection of essays on financial market development and economic growth. In contrast to existing literature, which considers credit for investment along, we investigate the relationship between credit market development and economic growth in the framework where both investment and consumption are financed via credit markets. The environment developed on this dissertation creates a role for each kind of credit to play. First, credit market conditions of entrepreneurs and consumers are related and depend on each other. Second, the interactions between consumers and entrepreneurs are of importance for economic growth. The models are empirically relevant, as they can explain why the effect of credit market development on economic growth appears to differ between high-income and middle- and low-income countries. Ph. D.

We measure the amount of income insurance and cross-sectional consumption smoothing (lending and borrowing) achieved within subgroups of states, such as regions or clubs, e.g. the club of rich states. We find that there is as much income insurance between, as well as within, regions. By contrast, consumption smoothing occurs mainly within regions but not between regions, suggesting that capital markets transcend regional barriers while credit markets are regional in their nature. Smoothing within the club of rich states is accomplished mainly via capital markets whereas consumption smoothing is dominant within the club of poor states. The fraction of a shock to gross state product smoothed by the federal tax-transfer system is the same for various regions and other clubs of states. We calculate the scope for consumption smoothing within various regions and clubs, finding that most gains from risk sharing can be achieved within US regions. Since a considerable fraction of shocks to gross state product are smoothed within regions, we conclude that existing markets achieve a substantial fraction of the potential welfare gains from interstate income and consumption smoothing. Nonetheless, non-negligible welfare gains may be obtained from further improvement of risk sharing institutions.

This paper presents a simple model relating firm age with firm size and access to credit markets. Lending to new firms is risky because lenders have had no time to accumulate observations about them. As a result, interest rates are high and loans are small for entering firms. As firms need credit to operate, credit markets impose a limit on the scale of operation of new firms. Reputation building by the firms allows markets to overcome these difficulties over time. Large firms face lower interest rates than small firms, and credit markets fluctuations are shown to have different effects on firms of different size.

Since the start of the financial crisis in 2007, the debate on the proper level leverage of financial institutions has been flourishing. The paper addresses such crucial issue within the Eurace artificial economy, by considering the effects that different choices of capital adequacy ratios for banks have on main economic indicators. The study also gives us the opportunity to examine the outcomes of the Eurace model so to discuss the nature of endogenous money, giving a contribution to a debate that has grown stronger over the last two decades. A set of 40 years long simulations have been performed and examined in the short (first five years), medium (the following 15 years) and long (the last 20 years) run. Results point out a non-trivial dependence of real economic variables such as the gross domestic product (GDP), the unemployment rate and the aggregate capital stock on banks' capital adequacy ratios; this dependence is in place due to the credit channel and varies significantly according to the chosen evaluation horizon. In general, while boosting the economy in the short run, regulations allowing for a high leverage of the banking system tend to be depressing in the medium and long run. Results also point out that the stock of money is driven by the demand for loans, therefore supporting the theory of endogenous nature of credit money.