Subsidizing Enjoyable Education

College education is not only an investment; for many people it also generates consumption benefits. If these benefits are normal goods, then the rich attend college at higher rates than the poor. Furthermore, the marginal poor student is smarter than the marginal rich student. Colleges aiming to attract smart students may therefore charge lower tuition to poorer students, even when the colleges lack market power. Moreover, when the social return to education exceeds the private return, allocative efficiency requires government grants to students to be means-tested.     

Student loans in developing countries: government versus company loans

Using data from the International Finance Corporation study on private investment in education, Tooley and West give details of two types of international experience with student loans. In particular they look at the government student loan scheme in Thailand and loan schemes offered by various for-profit and nonprofit education companies in Peru, Colombia and India. Difficulties are pointed out with regard to the government scheme, which it may be possible to alleviate under the company schemes.     

The Debt/Equity Swap in Latin America– In Whose Interest?

This paper presents the basic analytics of a debt/equity swap and illustrates the concept with a detailed example of American Express Bank's swap transactions that began in 1986 and have resulted in construction of seven hotels in Mexico during the course of the swap agreement. The economics of the swap are presented from the lending bank's view, from the foreign direct investor's view, and from the borrowing country's view. It is concluded that: swaps offer net benefits to the borrower country when additional investment is generated (from the swap transaction itself and/or from encouraging further investment as a result of the swap policy); they offer net benefits to the lender when future loan servicing prospects are poor and viable investment opportunities exist; and they offer net benefits to the direct investor when the cost of financing the investment through the swap is less than for alternative financing sources.
The analytical framework presented here allows the bank lender to formally compare alternatives of holding impaired LDC loans on its books, selling the loans in the secondary market, trading the loans for loans from another country, and swapping the loans for equity investments in the borrowing country. It similarly allows the government policymaker to compare the relevant economic costs and benefits of swaps, so that better swap policies can be developed.     

以国外教师队伍建设为纲浅析稳定民办高校教师队伍

近几年国内高考生源数急剧下降,高招录取率却逐年上升,民办高校由于昂贵的学费使部分考生望而却步,多数民办高校因为生源紧张影响教师工资、福利待遇的提升,直接导致教师队伍不稳定。     

国家助学贷款:高校风险解构及其后果阐释

国家助学贷款是一种与教育机会均等的思想和高等教育财政的改革相匹配的教育成本分担方式,属于政策性金融业务。我国助学贷款政策要求高校承担相当部分的风险补偿资金,这使得高校在多重任务代理下必然做出逆向选择。本文对我国现行的国家助学贷款风险分担机制设计上的缺陷给高校带来了政策、声誉、管理与关系上的四大风险进行了分析,并对这些风险可能导致国家助学贷款政策失灵以及高校发展机会丧失的严重后果进行了阐释,认为国家应承担主要的贷款风险,本质上作为金融产品的助学贷款存在创新的巨大空间。     

银行与银行博弈结构下的国家助学贷款风险探析

当前,国家助学贷款违约率高以致银行风险大——银行惜贷严重已不容忽视。全面认识国家助学贷款政策实施中存在的风险,保障国家助学贷款政策的可持续性发展,成了我们迫切需要解决的问题。本文试图用博弈论来研究我国助学贷款:即从我国国家助学贷款中较易忽视的银行与银行这对主体间利益博弈所存在的风险成因入手探讨,得出现行国家助学贷款要走出困境需采取的一系列对策。     

In search for yield? Survey-based evidence on bank risk taking

Monetary policy can have an impact on economic and financial stability through the risk taking of banks. Falling interest rates might induce investment into risky activities. This paper provides evidence on the link between monetary policy and bank risk taking. We use a factor-augmented vector autoregressive model (FAVAR) for the US for the period 1997–2008. Besides standard macroeconomic indicators, we include factors summarizing information provided in the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Terms of Business Lending (STBL). These data provide information on banks׳ new loans as well as interest rates for different loan risk categories and different banking groups. We identify a risk-taking channel of monetary policy by distinguishing responses to monetary policy shocks across different types of banks and different loan risk categories. Following an expansionary monetary policy shock, small domestic banks increase their exposure to risk. Large domestic banks do not change their risk exposure. Foreign banks take on more risk only in the mid-2000s, when interest rates were ‘too low for too long’.     

浅论高校扩招中的财务风险及控制

由于高校扩招的速度远远超过了政府的教育投入,高校贷款规模不断扩张。随着高校贷款陆续进入还贷高峰期,高校因过度负债而导致财务危机,并严重影响了学校的正常运行和持续发展,本文从高校财务风险的成因入手,提出有效的财务风险应对措施,来促进高校稳定可持续发展。     

Measuring Credit Risk of a Bank's Corporate Loan Portfolio Using Advanced Internal Ratings Base Approach

Abstract

The use of technical and advanced approaches in the measurement of credit risk of banks' portfolios has nowadays become a very hot issue. The most recent technical report issued by the Basel Committee in May 2003 has concentrated heavily on the measurement of credit risk using either foundation or advanced Internal Ratings Base (IRB) approaches. This empirical research study attempts to measure credit risk of a bank's corporate loan portfolio, including firms from 10 different Turkish sectors. The monthly observations of the total amount of corporate loans and the total amount of corporate loans at default across various sectors are downloaded from the web page of Central Bank of Turkey (CBT) in a period of 1999-2002. This period covers 47 monthly observations since CBT has captured sectoral corporate loans beginning of 1999. Therefore, the observed sectoral default rates are needed to be simulated to obtain a nicely shaped distribution. Monte Carlo simulation is applied for 1,000 times. Based on the simulated default rates, the expected sectoral default rates are computed. Next, a credit quality rating scale is fitted into sectoral default rates distributions. Finally, the sectoral weights in the whole loan portfolio are multiplied by the expected sectoral default rates matrix, considering cross-sectoral correlations to get the total amount of the bank's credit risk and capital requirement. It is assumed that sectoral monthly default rates are a good representative of the default risk of a sample bank's corporate loan portfolio since no publicly available data on any particular bank's corporate loan portfolio composition exists. Nevertheless, this research may be a good application for measuring the credit risk of banks' corporate loan portfolios using advanced IRB approach.     

浅析高校在国家助学贷款政策实施中的角色重新定位

国家助学贷款是银行发放的用于全日制高等学校在校生支付学费和生活费的贷款。在国家助学贷款的具体实施过程中,高校作为学生和银行的桥梁,每年要向经办银行交纳一定数额的风险补偿金来为学生贷款作担保。然而近年来持续走低的还款率给各高校带来负担,使我们不得不深思高校在助学贷款中角色的转变,给高校的多重角色重新定位。本文在对某高校助学贷款的具体实施进行调查的基础上,提出了高校在助学贷款实施中的多重角色的转变,其中包括淡化担保者角色,丰富教育者及协助者角色的内涵,并提出在各种角色中高校的具体职责。     

Public versus private provision of liquidity: Is there a trade-off?

To what extent is public debt private liquidity? Much policy advice given in the aftermath of the financial crisis rests on the assumption that increasing public debt relaxes borrowing constraints of private households. This is the case for ad-hoc debt limits, which are exogenous to public policy. Instead, if debt limits are fully endogenous, as e.g. in the case of the natural borrowing limit, public debt has no impact. We assume that borrowing limits arise because of limited contract enforceability and are therefore determined as equilibrium outcomes. Using an incomplete markets economy in which households are subject to uninsurable earnings shocks, we show that public debt provides some liquidity, but less so than it would if constraints were imposed ad-hoc. We show that generating borrowing constraints as an equilibrium outcome substantially alters the answers to other important questions, such as for the welfare effects of government debt or its impact on real economic activity.     

STUDENT DEBT EFFECTS ON FINANCIAL WELL‐BEING: RESEARCH AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS

Reviewing the data regarding effects of student debt on students’ financial outcomes following college – whether successful graduation or premature exit – makes clear that there is a price to pay for having to borrow money to go to college. Indebted college graduates have lower net worth, less home equity, and compromised ability to accumulate assets, as compared to their peers with the same level of education but no student debt. They may also experience poorer educational outcomes, with independent effects on earning power and, then, later wealth accumulation. Especially given the relationship between initial household wealth and children's later educational outcomes, these findings about the post‐college financial outcomes of indebted students and graduates raise the specter of ongoing, sustained, and cross‐generational perpetuation of societal divides. In the United States, higher education is valued not just as a good in itself, but also as a means to the end of greater economic security and the primary lever for economic mobility. Evaluating student loans through this lens underscores the long‐term, volatile, and often hidden effects of student loan dependence and raises the stakes for consideration of alternative approaches to higher education finance.     

Estimation of the effects of adverse selection and moral hazard on income-contingent loan plans for professional and graduate students

The increasing repayment burden of conventional student loans and the rapid growth of attendance costs are concerns that should spark renewed interest in income-contingent loans, especially for students in high-cost graduate and professional programs. This paper provides a model of the demand for income-contingent loans that can be used to estimate the possible effects of adverse selection and moral hazard on the financial viability of income-contingent loan plans. Simulations based on the loan-demand model are presented for medical students, and the results are discussed in terms of alternative options for reducing the effects of adverse selection and moral hazard.     

Credit rationing, race, and the mortgage market

This study applies microdata from the 1983 Survey of Consumer Finances to evaluate the effects of borrower race and default risk in mortgage lending. The empirical analysis is based on a probit model of whether borrowers obtain FHA or conventional mortgages; the former are fully insured and are characterized by easier downpayment constraints, but are typically more expensive. Hence, households borrowing through the FHA will tend to be credit constrained in the conventional market. Results of the analysis indicate that variables which proxy lender concerns about default risk and cost have an important effect on the type of loan borrowers obtain. Empirical estimates also suggest that minority households are significantly less likely to obtain conventional financing than whites, even after controlling for various proxies of default risk. These results suggest that race effects in mortgage lending may persist for reasons unrelated to borrower default risk.     

Is the secondary loan market valuable to borrowers?

In recent years, the secondary loan market has developed into an over-the-counter market where loans are not only sold but also subsequently traded. This shift away from traditional banking is altering the business of lending. Loan sales are valuable to banks because they free up capital, generate fee-based income and facilitate risk management; but they may be costly to borrowers because they negatively affect bank monitoring incentives. In this paper, however, we argue that there is another potential benefit to borrowers from loan sales. Borrowers with trading loans, in particular those with liquid loans, may “demand” a share of bank benefits from loan sales when they take out new loans as it will be easier for banks to sell these loans afterwards. We investigate this potential benefit of the secondary loan market by comparing the interest rates borrowers pay before their loans start to trade with the interest rates they pay on loans originated post-trading. Our results show that, on average, borrowers pay higher spreads on the loans they take out after the onset of trading on their loans. Importantly, our results also show that borrowers with liquid trading loans are able to borrow at lower interest rates after the onset of trading on their loans. Thus, while the banks’ decision to sell loans may initially impose a cost on borrowers, those whose loans enter the secondary loan market and become liquid benefit from an interest rate discount on their subsequent loans.     

Cyclicality in losses on bank loans

Based on unique data we show that macro variables, the default rate and loss given default of bank loans share common cyclical components. The innovation in our model is the distinction between loans with either severe or mild losses. The variation in the proportion of these two types drives the cyclic behavior of the loss given default and constitutes the links with the default rate and macro variables. These links vary according to loan and borrower characteristics. During downturns, the proportion of defaults with severe losses increases, but the distribution of losses conditional on their being mild or severe does not change. although loans are monitored more closely than bonds and are more senior, the cyclical variation in their losses resembles those for bonds, albeit around a lower average level. This variation leads to an increase in the capital reserves required for loan portfolios.     

欠发达地区民间借贷的对策研究

近几年民间借贷案件数量不断上升,金融风险问题增多。从民间借贷风险防范的视角,以欠发达地区安徽省某地级市为例,介绍了欠发达地区民间借贷的现状,剖析了民间借贷存在的风险问题,如投资渠道不够畅通、民间借贷市场发展不规范、群众诚信意识不强、群众风险意识薄弱,提出风险防范建议,如加强政府对正规金融的支持、加强金融监管、加强诚信机制建设、增强民众金融素养。     

The shadow costs of repos and bank liability structure

Making use of a structural model that allows for optimal liquidity management, we study the role that repos play in a bank׳s financing structure. In our model the bank׳s assets consist of illiquid loans and liquid reserves and are financed by a combination of repos, long-term debt, deposits and equity. Repos are a cheap source of funding, but they are subject to an exogenous rollover risk. We show that the use of repos inflicts two types of indirect (“shadow”) costs on the bank׳s shareholders: first, it induces the bank to maintain higher liquid reserves in order to alleviate the additional default risk; second, it adds to the cost of long-term debt financing. These shadow costs limit the bank׳s appetite for cheap but unstable repo funding. This effect is, however, weakened under poor returns on risky assets, access to deposit funding and the depositor preference rule. We also analyze the impact of a liquidity coverage ratio, payout restrictions and a leverage ratio on the bank׳s financing choices and show that all these tools are able to curb the bank׳s reliance on repos.     

Competitive bank pricing and adverse selection,with implications for testing the SCP hypothesis

Adverse borrower selection implies that competitive interest rates on bank loans will be an increasing function of the number of banks in the market, whenever the marginal cost of lending does not rise too sharply with market concentration (a condition supported by a variety of empirical evidence). Moreover, this linkage is stronger during economic recessions when more loans default. These findings suggest a need to reinterpret many prior empirical studies of loan price versus concentration, as well as raising new considerations in the appropriate construction of future empirical tests.     

Availability of Mortgage Loans in Volatile Real Estate Markets

This paper presents a default model for mortgages on single-family houses implying a higher probability of negative equity and thus default in real estate markets with high price volatility. Mortgage lenders compensate for the increased default probability in volatile markets by demanding higher downpayments or increased creditworthiness of loan applicants, thus making mortgage loans more difficult to obtain. An empirical analysis finds greatly varying price volatility in single-family real estate markets in a sample of 42 cities. Consistent with the implications of the model, the empirical analysis finds that the fraction of low-downpayment loans declines in volatile markets.