Exchange rate policy and imported inflation in a credit rationing economy

The paper assesses the effects of exchange rate policies and imported inflation in the case of Finland, which is a small open economy with underdeveloped financial markets. Under such circumstances interest rates do not necessarily equilibrate the credit market, so that a simplified theoretical disequilibrium model with credit rationing is first presented. In the second part of the paper the Bank of Finland quarterly econometric model for the Finnish economy is simulated. The most important conclusion to emerge from the simulations with the quarterly model is that the effects are highly dependent on the credit market conditions.     

SOME NEW EVIDENCE ON COMPETITION IN PAYDAY LENDING MARKETS

A critical question in the policy debate about payday lending is whether other financial institutions can plausibly provide attractive and lower‐priced substitutes for standard payday loans. I present several new pieces of evidence addressing the question, focusing on whether credit unions, which are often held as the strongest potential competitors to payday lenders, do (or might) viably compete in the payday loan market. National payday loan offerings by credit unions show that very few credit unions currently offer payday loans. Credit union industry reports suggest that those credit unions offering such loans seem unwilling or unable to undercut substantially the prevailing prices set by payday lenders. Those industry reports also reveal that lower‐priced credit union loans generally ration riskier borrowers out of the market by imposing greater restrictions on approval and repayment; risk‐adjusted prices for credit union payday loans may not be lower at all. Survey evidence suggests that most current payday borrowers prefer higher‐priced but less restrictive standard payday loans to lower‐priced but more restrictive alternatives offered by credit unions. The combined demand‐ and supply‐side evidence suggests that one should not expect credit unions (or by extension banks) to offer lower‐priced, higher‐quality alternatives for consumers who currently use payday loans. (JEL G2, L0, L5)     

THE STRATEGIC ROLE OF INTERNATIONAL CREDIT AS AN INSTRUMENT OF TRADE*

This paper is an investigation of the role of international credit as a factor influencing the donor Countries' exports. Based on standard techniques of microeconomic theory, our model examines this relationship under different market structures in the industrialized donor country (North). Under monopoly and perfect competition, the availability of credit increases the North's exports; under oligopoly, within a class of parametric configurations, this relationship is reversed. We also find that, under certain conditions, if a developing country (South) takes recourse to international credit to finance its imports, it would end up worse off, that is the availability of international credit can be welfare-decreasing for the borrowing nation.     

Discount rates and credit markets: Theory and evidence from rural india

Three models of credit markets - (1) the permanent income model, (2) upward sloping credit supply to individual borrowers, and (3) constrained credit due to imperfect enforcement - are tested using credit market data and an experimental study of individuals' discount rates in south India. The permanent income model is rejected by both the discount rate and the credit market data. The discount rate data are consistent with either of the other two models, while the credit market data are consistent with a combination of these two models. Other explanations are found to be insufficient to explain the results of this study.     

Adverse risk interaction: An integrated approach

This paper studies adverse interaction between credit and market risk. We develop a comprehensive Merton-type model, in which payment ability of borrowers is driven by the overall economic growth, while the level of their liabilities is sensitive to market variables. To illustrate the model, we apply numerical simulations to estimate credit, market and integrated Value at Risk from the loss distribution using industry-wide data from the Serbian banking sector. We show that—even after accounting for presence of market risk in the banking book—the total risk remains higher than the simple sum of credit and market risk. The results emphasize the importance of integrated approach to assessment of economic capital.     

Why Credit Rating Agencies Exist

Although credit rating agencies exist and are important to the capital markets, there remains a question of why they should exist. Two standard theories are that rating agencies correct a problem of information asymmetry and that they de facto regulate investments. These theories do not fully answer the question. This paper suggests an alternative explanation. While rating agencies produce little new information, they sort information available in the credit market. This sorting function is needed due to the large volume of information in the credit market. Sorting facilitates better credit analysis and investment selection, but bond investors or a cooperative of them cannot easily replicate this function. Outside of their information intermediary and regulatory roles, rating agencies serve a useful market purpose even if credit ratings inherently provide little new information. This alternative explanation has policy implications for the regulation of the industry.     

Financial distress and fiscal inflation

Is inflation ‘always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon’ or is it fundamentally a fiscal phenomenon? The answer hinges crucially on the underlying monetary–fiscal policy regime. Scant attention has been directed to the role of credit market frictions in discerning the policy regime, despite its growing importance in empirical macroeconomics. We augment a standard monetary model to incorporate fiscal details and credit market imperfections. These ingredients allow for both interpretations of the inflation process in a financially constrained environment. We find that introducing financial frictions to the model and adding financial variables to the dataset generate important identifying restrictions on the observed pattern between inflation and measures of financial and fiscal stress, to the extent that it overturns existing findings about which monetary–fiscal policy regime produced the U.S. data. To confront policy regime uncertainty, we propose the use of dynamic prediction pools and find strong cyclical patterns in the estimated historical regime weights.     

中国信贷市场匹配机制的再设计

我国的银行信贷市场呈现二元结构--目标客户与非目标客户信贷市场.两者有着不同的运行机制.目标客户信贷市场的议价过程存在一个类似企业"求婚"的递延接受程序,市场的运行结果稳定.非目标客户信贷市场不存在导致稳定结果的分散化匹配程序,市场广度和深度不够.为提高非目标客户信贷市场的稳定性和运行效率,我们建议通过公布银行信贷方案、设立非目标客户信贷中心、设立中央化的匹配清算所等,把分散化的议价过程变成中央化的匹配程序,从而完善和降低中小企业的交易成本,为中小企业的发展拓展广阔空间.     

Pro-cyclical effect of sovereign rating changes on stock returns: a fact or factoid?

This article examines the effect of changes in sovereign credit ratings and their outlook on the stock market returns of European countries at different phases of business cycle. Using standard four-factor model, it records a significant average marginal effect of credit rating announcements on stock market returns. Both magnitude and significance of the effect vary with business cycle and across announcement types. However, we do not find evidence of pro-cyclical effect of sovereign rating and outlook changes on stock returns. Our results show that stock markets react more negatively to rating downgrades in recovery phases and more positively to rating upgrades in contractionary period. Both results are statistically significant and robust to various sensitivity tests.     

Credit Rationing in Medium-small Enterprises Credit Market under Asymmetric Information

Credit rationing has been an objective phenomenon in medium-small enterprises credit market of China. By analyzing the present situation of medium-small enterprises credit market of China, this study gives a new credit rationing model fitting medium-small enterprises credit market of China well. It has been showed in the empirical study that different factor has each different influence on medium-small enterprises credit market; further more, only the change of chastisement factor can make the medium-small enterprises credit market achieve whole success, but other factors can merely get integrant success even though under the most ideal condition.     

信用制度的微观基础——信用行为分析

信用制度的微观基础是经济活动主体的信用行为。由信用行为而产生的信用关系可归结为三种基本形式：单方面的信用关系、双方相互信用关系和中介的信用关系。对这三种形式下的信用行为的分析表明，竞争性市场并不会自发地形成可靠的信用关系；每一种信用关系都需要一个完善的社会信用制度来支撑。     

对加快我国个人信用制度建设有关问题的思考

个人信用制度主要是指由国家建立的,用于监督、管理和保障个人信用活动健康、规范发展的一整套规章制度和行为规范,其对维护市场经济秩序和完善市场经济体制具有重要作用。本文从我国个人信用制度建设的现状出发,针对我国个人信用制度建设中存在的问题和主要制约因素,提出了促进我国个人信用制度建设的对策思路。     

商业银行信贷配给对中国房地产业波动的影响*

商业银行信贷配给控制中国房地产业信贷规模和结构,造成供给和需求的规模与结构扭曲,影响货币政策和财政政策的调控效果,容易引起房地产业波动。本文通过构建信贷配给模型,测算不同波动时期当中,商业银行信贷配给程度的变化趋势,以及对房地产业的影响。实证结果显示,信贷配给程度的变化与房地产业波动显著相关,信贷配给改变了投资和消费在推动房地产产出过程中的结构,并制约路径依赖对产出的影响,同时影响财政政策和数量型货币政策稳定房地产业的效果。本文认为,可以通过逐渐弱化商业银行在房地产金融市场中的垄断地位,丰富房地产信贷供给层次和结构,以及加强信贷供给监督来缓解信贷配给的消极作用。     

Credit and inflation under borrower?s lack of commitment

In this paper we study the effects of monetary policy on privately supplied credit in model economies where money is needed for transaction purposes and agents who default on their loans cannot participate in the credit market but are allowed to accumulate money. In our deterministic benchmark economy where agents alternate in productivity, credit has the role of smoothing consumption. We show that deflation crowds out credit completely. The reason is that deflation increases the value of being excluded from the credit market and eliminates the incentive to repay loans. When inflation is positive but low, credit, consumption smoothing and welfare increase with inflation, until inflation reaches a threshold at which the allocation is efficient and money becomes superneutral.     

Unemployment, credit rationing, and capital accumulation: a tale of two frictions

Summary. This paper develops a model in which two information frictions are embedded into an otherwise conventional neoclassical growth model; an adverse selection problem in the labor market and a costly state verification problem in the credit market. The former allows equilibrium unemployment to arise endogenously while the latter is responsible for equilibrium credit rationing. This structure is used to investigate a theoretical link between the level of unemployment and the extent of credit rationing (and capital formation). The presence of the labor market friction is enough to generate scope for multiple steady state equilibria. The model also generates a large class of endogenous cyclical and chaotic dynamical equilibria. Development trap phenomena may also appear. Received: April 10, 1998; revised version: May 20, 1998     

银行信贷配给与中小企业贷款——一个内生化抵押品和企业规模的理论模型

本文在吸收其他文献合理成分的基础上 ,通过考虑贷款抵押品的信号甄别机制和银行审查成本对贷款额的影响 ,将借款企业的资产规模、风险类型与抵押品价值相联系 ,构建了内生化抵押品和企业规模的均衡信贷配给模型。根据该模型 ,在信贷配给中被剔除的主要是资产规模小于银行所要求的临界抵押品价值的中小企业和部分高风险企业。本文的理论模型对于更好地理解市场经济及转型经济条件下的中小企业融资难问题提供了启示。     

我国信贷配给区域间差异及市场分化模型

由于我国不同区域间发展极不平衡,其中比较突出的是农村和城市、东南沿海和中西部地区之间,导致了我国信贷市场区域分化。信贷市场区域分化越严重,银行越会忽视部分弱势地区,而把资金集中在部分发达地区。近年来我国信贷资金这种区域集中现象越来越明显,不同区域表现出了巨大的信贷差异。文章首先通过部分相关数据和信贷调查分析了我国信贷市场的区域分化,然后建立了信贷配给的区域分化模型,分析不同区域间信贷差异以及信贷集中。最后给出了相关的结论和建议。     

Monetary policy,endogenous transactions,and financial market segmentation

An endogenous financial market segmentation model is constructed to explore the role of costly credit as a medium of exchange in the monetary policy elasticity of financial market activity. Against inflation risk, credit is an alternative insurance device to a cash transfer from the financial market. In equilibrium, credit reduces the financial market activity rate. Monetary policy has redistributive effects across economic individuals. Inflation may not tax financial market non-participants. However, it may tax financial market participants by increasing the financial market activity rate. Welfare may increase and the optimal money growth rate can be positive.     

Financial systems and economic growth in South Africa: a dynamic complementarity test

This study examines the relationship between banks, stock markets and economic growth in South Africa. The study attempts to answer one critical question: are stock markets and banks complementary to one another in the process of enhancing economic growth? The complementarity between the stock markets and banks is examined by including a set of interactive terms in a standard growth model, alongside bank development and stock market development proxies. In order to test the robustness of the results, three proxies of stock market development have been used, namely stock market capitalization, stock market traded value and stock market turnover – against the ratio of bank credit to the private sector, a proxy for bank-based financial development. The economic growth is, however, proxied by real GDP per capita. Using the ARDL-Bounds testing procedure, the study finds that the complementarity between stock market development and bank-based financial development is weak and sensitive to the proxy used to measure stock market development.