International bailouts, moral hazard and conditionality

The large international bailouts of the 1990s have been criticized for generating moral hazard at the expense of the global taxpayer. We argue that this criticism is misleading because international bailouts create no, or very few, costs to the international community. Instead, the problem is to ensure that bailouts are not used to facilitate bad domestic policies, thus creating moral hazard at the expense of domestic taxpayers. This may require a shift towards ex ante conditionality, in the sense that the availability and size of official crisis lending need to be conditional on government policies before the crisis.     

Optimal personal bankruptcy design under moral hazard

In this paper, we develop a normative theory of unsecured consumer credit and personal bankruptcy based on the optimal trade-off between incentives and insurance. First, in order to characterize this trade-off, we solve a dynamic moral hazard problem in which agents' private effort decisions influence the life-cycle profiles of their earnings. We then show how the optimal allocation of individual effort and consumption can be implemented in a market equilibrium in which (i) agents and intermediaries repeatedly trade secured and unsecured debt instruments, and (ii) agents obtain (restricted) discharge of their unsecured debts in bankruptcy. The structure of this equilibrium and the associated restrictions on debt discharge closely match the main qualitative features of personal credit markets and bankruptcy law that actually exist in the United States.     

Severe or gentle bankruptcy law: Which impact on investing and financing decisions?

This research investigates how legal sanctions prevailing under bankruptcy may impact on debt contracting and on investing decision. We model firms having the opportunity to engage (or not) faulty management. In case of default, the firms may escape costly bankruptcy by reaching a private agreement with the bank. We show that such renegotiation process may depend on the level of severity of bankruptcy law.Our approach helps in answering the following key questions: can bankruptcy costs always be internalized? Who benefits from accrued severity? Should the creditors accept a certain level of moral hazard from their debtors? Should bankruptcy law be extremely severe in order to ensure ex-ante efficiency? Does such severity depend on the financial environment?The model focuses on three equilibriums. The first equilibrium describes honest firms that choose the best investment project (ex-ante efficiency). Here, we show that bankruptcy costs can be avoided through private renegotiation (ex-post efficiency). Yet, the legislator cannot directly implement this equilibrium as it does not depend on the level of legal sanctions. A second equilibrium describes tricky firms turning to the less profitable and riskiest project. Here, default is still privately resolved: the occurrence of such equilibrium can be avoided owing to a minimal amount of legal sanctions that depend on the level of interest rate. Last, we consider firms that adopt mixed strategies regarding their investment policy. Here, two post-default bargains prevail (pooling or separating) and costly bankruptcy may occur.Simulations illustrate how the bank finally chooses between these equilibriums while the legal environment becomes more severe. For moderate levels of legal sanctions, banks may accept a certain level of faulty management, expecting to take advantage of bankruptcy punishment. An increase in sanctions, however, has a compelling effect on the companies towards honoring their commitments. Once the optimal equilibrium prevails, any additional increase in sanctions is ineffective as the players' strategies no longer depend on the legal environment. As a result, extreme severity is not required to ensure both ex-ante and ex-post efficiencies. Last, we find that a more severe bankruptcy law increases the protection of banks and may result in reduction of the contractual interest rate, which on the other hand benefits the debtors.     

SCREENING AS A UNIFIED THEORY OF DELINQUENCY,RENEGOTIATION, AND BANKRUPTCY

We propose a parsimonious model with adverse selection where delinquency, renegotiation, and bankruptcy all occur in equilibrium as a result of a simple screening mechanism. A borrower has private information about her endowment, and a lender uses random contracts to screen different types of borrowers. In equilibrium, some borrowers choose not to repay and thus become delinquent. The lender renegotiates with some delinquent borrowers. In the absence of renegotiation, delinquency leads to bankruptcy. Applied to mortgage restructuring, our mechanism generates amplification of house‐price shocks through foreclosure spillovers. We also show that government intervention aimed at limiting foreclosures may have unintended consequences.     

Regulatory Monitoring,Closure Costs and Bank Moral Hazard Behavior

We theoretically analyze the efficacy of close regulatory monitoring and early bank closure policies, introduced by the 1991 Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Improvement Act (FDICIA), in reducing the FDICs losses and curbing bank moral hazard behavior induced by mis-priced deposit insurance. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we demonstrate that continuous bank monitoring and early closure may in fact exacerbate the moral hazard problem if bank shareholders face a penalty upon closure. Moreover, if reputational disincentives and monitoring costs prevent the regulator from implementing timely closure then the banks moral hazard incentives are significantly altered. These results suggest several new policy implications.     

Economic and Social Security in the Twenty-first Century, with Attention to Europe

A partly heuristic attempt is made to explore long-run policies aimed at a second-best compromise between ex ante risk-sharing efficiency and ex post productive efficiency. Wage subsidies for low-skilled workers financed by taxes on high wages are advocated, together with improved risk sharing between capital and labour, between generations and among the countries belonging to EMU. The scope of the policies advocated is limited by considerations of moral hazard, time consistency and fiscal competition. Moreover, estimates of some key economic parameters remain very imprecise. Several avenues of further research are identified.     

Trade liberalization, heterogeneous firms and the soft budget constraint

We analyze the interaction between the soft budget constraint (SBC) and international trade by placing Segal’s (1998) SBC model within Melitz’s (2003) framework of international trade with heterogeneous monopolistically competitive firms. As in Segal’s model, SBC may result in moral hazard. The opening to international trade adds another sort of inefficiency. Some firms that would have become exporters in the absence of SBC choose to apply low effort and not export in order to extract a subsidy from the government. This effect takes place when the trade costs are sufficiently low. Overall, however, trade liberalization reduces inefficiencies generated by SBC. The number of firms subject to moral hazard SBC decreases, aggregate effort level increases and aggregate profits lost due to SBC-induced sub-optimal effort decline as trade costs decrease.     

债务重组的公司治理效应——基于中国上市公司的实证分析

债务重组存在虚假破产信息和道德风险问题。本文运用SPSS筛选变量分析法对2003～2007年中国宣布债务重组公报的上市公司数据进行实证研究,结果显示,我国上市公司债务重组没有有效改善公司的治理绩效。     

战略竞争、股权融资约束与高负债融资抉择

本文基于产品市场竞争环境下,企业需要投资扩张更新换代产品或者达到规模经济,但面临股权融资约束的情况,建立多期模型,分析高负债融资的权衡因素。模型表明,企业权衡的是放弃举债融资造成投资不足带来的竞争地位损失、企业价值下降,与举债融资以保持足额投资,但可能增加财务危机概率的风险,而不是传统资本结构权衡理论认为的税盾与财务危机成本的权衡。模型进一步证明,在产品生命周期短,更新换代快以及规模效应明显的情况下,企业会倾向于将保持足额投资放在首位,而舍弃资本结构的安全性。     

Moral hazard and legal services contracts

We examine legal services contracts characterized by a contingency fee and an hours reporting requirement in a moral hazard setting. We find that hours reporting requirements in contingency contracts can reduce the rent needed to induce high attorney effort under moral hazard. Under certain conditions, the ability to set hours above the first-best level leads a client to choose a contract inducing high effort when she otherwise would not. The important condition of this result is, however, that hours must be contractible. We apply our model to the 2010 Florida “sunshine” law that requires hours reporting by private attorneys employed on a contingency fee basis by the attorney general. We find the sunshine laws of Florida and other states may, in addition to providing more transparency in government contracting, increase the public benefit from an attorney general’s employment of private attorneys.     

团队生产、集体声誉和分享规则

集体行动问题是契约与组织理论关注的核心主题,而"搭便车"或团队道德风险的存在使得这一问题难以得到令人满意的解决方案.本文为解决团队内部的道德风险难题提供了一种新的思路:一个团队为了向市场显示对自己有利的产出信号,会提供高于静态博弈的联合努力水平,从而形成一种集体声誉.这种集体声誉可以用于补贴团队内部由于"搭便车"造成的效率损失,从而缓解"预算平衡约束"和"激励相容约束"之间的矛盾.本文的分析表明,当集体声誉租金足够大时,通过适当的内部分享规则或者产权安排,不同类型的团队组合均可能实现一定程度的合作,从而缓解"搭便车"问题.     

Deposit insurance and moral hazard problem: the case of Turkish banking system

We investigate the effect of full deposit insurance introduced in 1994 on the financial performance of Turkish commercial banks. We construct a model, under reasonable assumptions, with deposit insurance where banks undertake excessive risk –?moral hazard risk. Empirical investigation using experimental design approach supports our moral hazard hypothesis. Our findings indicate that banks subject to the moral hazard behaviour show significant increases in foreign exchange position risk and deterioration in capital adequacy relative to their benchmark after introduction of full deposit insurance system. We relate this excessive risk-taking to the moral hazard behaviour by commercial banks. The research results indicate that complete deposit insurance system distorts the incentive structure of commercial banks and thus, prevents proper functioning of market discipline mechanism and leads to the taking excessive risk-taking.     

Industry equilibrium with outside financing and moral hazard: Implications for market integration

In this paper, we study industry equilibrium under the assumptions that (1) firms need outside financing and (2) they have a moral hazard problem in taking potentially excessive risks. We characterize an industry equilibrium with credit rationing, where firms choose not to take risks, and compare this to the industry equilibrium in the absence of credit rationing. In both cases, we show that competition increases and prices decline as markets integrate. However, in markets with credit rationing there is typically more exit, a smaller decline in prices and, most strikingly, the market value of the industry increases rather than decreases.     

国有企业效率与退出选择——基于部分竞争性行业的经验研究

本文对2000-2008年期间中国部分竞争性行业国有企业的退出及其主要决定因素进行了研究。通过非平衡面板企业数据,在计算企业效率和界定不同退出行为的基础上,本文运用多项选择Logit模型分析发现,企业效率是决定国有企业退出的重要变量。其中,效率较高的企业更愿意选择民营化退出,而效率低的企业更有可能选择破产清算或打散重组的方式,完全退出国有部门。然而,在2000-2008年的后期,效率对于企业退出的影响程度明显降低。国有企业退出行为的变化,表明了在其背后政府目标的调整。     

Start-ups, venture capitalists, and the capital gains tax

A model of start-up finance with double moral hazard is proposed. Entrepreneurs have ideas and technical competence, but lack own resources as well as commercial experience. Venture capitalists (VCs) provide start-up finance and managerial support. Both types of agents thus jointly contribute to the firm's success, but neither type's effort is verifiable. We find that the market equilibrium is biased towards inefficiently low entrepreneurial effort and venture capital support. In this situation, the capital gains tax is particularly harmful. The introduction of a small tax impairs effort and advice and leads to a first-order welfare loss. Several other policies towards venture capital and start-up entrepreneurship are also investigated.     

Progressive Taxation, Moral Hazard, and Entrepreneurship

This paper considers the general equilibrium and welfare effects of a linear progressive income tax with entrepreneurship and moral hazard. A competitive intermediation sector diversifies risk associated with entrepreneurial activity, but full risk consolidation is prevented by moral hazard. Since effort is not observable, risk bearing of entrepreneurs is required for incentive reasons. The extent of risk consolidation is endogenously explained. We find that a nonredistributive tax is neutral. A progressive tax always impairs entrepreneurship while the effect on welfare can be positive or zero, depending on the specification of moral hazard. Some results may also depend on the concrete formulation of preferences.     

Investment and the soft budget constraint in China

This paper examines the incentive effects of the soft budget constraint on the investment behavior of firms in general and on the investment-cash flow sensitivity in particular. To this end, we develop a simple model of moral hazard that takes the soft budget constraint into account. Within this moral hazard environment, we show that investment is positively related to the amount of internal funds. We further show that the presence of the soft budget constraint deteriorates the moral hazard problem, thereby making the investment level less sensitive to the amount of internal funds. This is the case irrespective of whether the soft budget constraint renders the firm more or less liquidity constrained. To test the model's empirical implications, we employ data of China's listed companies for the period from 1997 to 2003. We use the share of state ownership as a proxy for the severity of the soft budget constraint. We find strong evidence that firms with larger shares of state ownership exhibit lower investment-cash flow sensitivities than firms with smaller shares of state ownership.     

Open access policies, regulated charges and non-price discrimination in telecommunications

Open access policies in telecommunications, including interconnection and unbundling, are implemented by regulators in an effort to increase competition in the sector. Lack of cooperation from incumbents is pervasive, given their incentives to engage in non-price discrimination and the moral hazard resulting from the inability of regulators to monitor the contract. We build a relationship between the access price and non-price discrimination, neither assuming a pre-determined market strategic interdependence or a specific demand function format. When the access charge is liberalized, the incentive for non-price discrimination disappears. It may be optimal for the regulator to set a second-best regulated access price to avoid non-price discrimination.     

Bounded Rationality in Principal‐Agent Relationships

We conducted six treatments of a standard moral hazard experiment with hidden action. The behavior in all treatments and periods was inconsistent with established agency theory. In the early periods, behavior differed significantly between treatments. This difference largely vanished in the final periods. We used logit agent quantal response equilibrium (LAQRE) as a device to grasp boundedly rational behavior and found the following: (1) LAQRE predictions are much closer to subjects' behavior in the laboratory; (2) LAQRE probabilities and experimental behavior show remarkably similar patterns; and (3) including social preferences in LAQRE does not better explain the experimental data; (4) LAQRE cannot explain the contract offers of some players who seem to choose some focal contract parameters.     

基于供应商道德风险的劳工标准移植研究*

越来越多的发展中国家企业通过劳工认证获取较多的市场份额,劳工标准移植的问题也受到较多关注。本文选择从供应商道德风险视角研究发展中国家的劳工标准移植的特征。研究发现,风险规避供应商的存在促使采购商必须在道德风险和努力水平之间选择一个次优均衡。尤其是考虑到最低标准等有限责任信息租的存在,使得采购商必须额外支付一定的代理成本以满足委托代理过程,最后的均衡劳工标准比仅考虑逆向选择更加扭曲。