Screening, cross-border banking, and the allocation of credit

The author analyses competition among banks when banks can use creditworthiness tests that generate (imperfect) information about borrowers. When banks can strategically adjust the test characteristics by investing resources in the screening technology, he shows that credit markets are not easily contestable. An increase in the intensity of competition may have few effects on incumbents» conduct and overall market shares. Moreover, conditions are provided under which screening efforts are reduced by competition. In such situations the quality of the overall loan portfolio declines and the economy incurs higher aggregate risk due to the lower quality of banks» information production. The welfare gains from integrating fragmented loan markets can actually be negative.     

Financial deregulation,credit allocation across sectors,and economic growth: evidence from China

This paper investigates whether financial deregulation causes economic growth through financial development. Financial development is measured by two channels: (1) changes in the allocation of credit across sectors, and (2) changes in savings and investment rates. We measure financial deregulation in China at the provincial level from 1981 to 1998. Our results suggest that financial reform causes economic growth in China. Further, its effect largely comes through the reallocation of credit across sectors, rather than changes in savings and investment rates.     

Banking structure and financial stability: a comparison of Chinese and German banking systems

In the process of financial globalization and diversification, the issue of financial stability has become heated all over the world. This paper attempts to uncover the delicate relationship between banking structure and financial stability by comparing and analyzing the situation of the Chinese and German banking systems. This paper suggests that (i) the trade-off between competition and concentration in banking industry is a vital factor to maintain financial stability and (ii) concentration is not always a bad thing for financial stability, especially in banking systems with discontent bank performance.     

The regulatory evolution of the post credit crisis fund management industry

The credit crisis that developed as a result of the problems in the US sub-prime mortgage market has consequences for the future shape of regulation of the fund management industry. The author examines the exposed agency problems, poor risk management, and the lack of liquidity in many fund offerings that have led to a number of new onerous regulations (as distinct from ‘acquired regulations’). The new regulations are changing the industry microstructure. Post credit crisis valuations are 73% of the pre credit crisis five-year levels, implying the markets are evaluating the industry differently in view of the many new challenges that it now faces.     

信用卡发展与我国商业银行市场结构变迁研究——基于Panzar-Rosse模型的实证研究

首先采用Panzar-Rosse模型定量研究近几年来我国商业银行业市场结构的变迁,在此基础上进一步研究信用卡的发展与商业银行市场结构变迁的关系。对我国商业银行近十年数据的实证研究表明,由于近些年我国对于银行业的政策不断放开,市场竞争总体来说越来越激烈。但是,信用卡的发展却减弱了商业银行业市场的竞争强度。     

Regulatory reform and labour earnings in Portuguese banking

This study examines changes in union contracts and wage structure during and after the introduction of regulatory reforms (deregulation and privatisation) in the Portuguese banking sector. The main finding is that, despite a relative wage erosion detected in the contract data, banking workers were able to enjoy an increasing wage premium in the period 1985–2000, probably reflecting the increasing profitability of the industry and the rise in labour productivity. The evidence also shows that some specific groups benefited relatively more than others: the least skilled and educated workforce and male workers gained more from the regulatory reforms. However, this unequal sharing of the wage premium did not raise wage inequality across ownership groups in the industry. I thank Mark Stewart, Odd Rune Straume, Ian Walker and two anonymous referees for very helpful comments. I am indebted to the Ministério do Trabalho e da Solidariedade for allowing the availability of data from Quadros de Pessoal. Financial support was provided by the Ministério da Ciência e Tecnologia under the grant BD/SFRH/2000/1291.     

Regulating the banking industry in transition economies: Exploring interactions between capital and reserve requirements

This paper examines the ‘prudential' role of reserve requirements in transition economies using a general-equilibrium banking model. The analysis stresses the role that reserve requirements may play in enforcing an adequate level of bank capitalization in a context in which it is difficult to assess the true value of bank assets. The paper also explores the interactions that exist between capital and reserve requirements and the effect of these regulations on the financial structure of banks and on the level of credit and interest rates.     

Branch banking, entry deterrence, and technology decisions

The paper sets up a theoretical model of banking firms to investigate the relationship between oligopolistic competition and technology structure by using the concept of decentralized operating decisions and centralized investment decisions. It concludes that the representative branch and the new entrant will choose the technology which is deviated from its cost-minimization level if neither of them acts as a quasi-competitive deposit demanders in the case of costless reversibility of capacity decision. In the case of capacity reversed not costlessly, the representative branch will choose the cost-minimizing technology level and the entrant's technology decision depends on its rival's conjectural variation.     

E-commerce and the market structure of the recorded music industry

In this article, we study the impact of the development of e-commerce on the concentration of the recorded music industry in France, for the period 2003–2010. First, we find that over the whole period, CD sales, measured at the distributor level, are less concentrated online than offline. Second, we find that sales concentration online has increased between the early period of e-commerce (2003–2006) and the later period (2007–2010).     

Prices and market structure: an empirical analysis of the supermarket industry in Chile

This article investigates empirically the relationship between market structure and consumer prices in the supermarket industry in Chile. A panel of monthly data from 16 cities in the period January 1998–September 2006 is used. We find that, the more concentrated the industry in a city, the higher the prices, while the participation of major national chains in cities tends to lower prices. In terms of magnitude, this latter effect prevails over the former. Moreover, the dominant local chain is found to behave differently depending on whether or not one of the national chains is present in the city. Finally, we find that prices rise when a national chain acquires another chain and both were previously in a city (inmerge) while if only one of the two was present (outmerge), prices fall.     

中国商业银行市场集中度影响因素及趋势研究

中国商业银行市场集中度影响因素中,期初集中度、外资银行进入、并购、市场需求成长率与效率变量对集中度的影响为负,而产品差异度与集中度不相关。对趋势的分析表明中国商业银行市场集中度将会经历一个由下降到上升的过程,但是其持续的时间将取决于中国经济金融市场化的深度与速度。     

产业结构调整背景下推行绿色信贷政策的思考

绿色信贷是我国银行业贯彻可持续发展战略、将经营活动与改善环境结合在一起的一项重大举措,是实施节能减排的有力金融杠杆。通过阐述了绿色信贷的含义,进而探讨在我国产业结构调整的背景下,我国商业银行推行绿色信贷政策的意义、实践及不足,并针对绿色信贷的建设提出了相关的建议。     

银行监管对银行业结构演进的影响——基于市场准入与经营范围监管视角的研究

文章以银行业集中度作为银行业结构的代理变量,实证检验了市场准入和经营范围的监管对一国银行业结构的影响。研究结果表明:(1)对国内银行市场准入的限制会增加银行业集中度,加强外资银行准入的限制则会降低银行业集中度;(2)发展中国家对于银行从事证券业务的限制更敏感;(3)发达国家对于银行从事保险和房地产业务的限制更敏感。拓展模型结果显示,放松外资银行准入会强化银行经营范围监管对银行业集中度的边际效应。     

Access to credit and informality among micro and small enterprises in Ethiopia

This paper examines the determinants of Micro and Small and Enterprises (MSEs) access to credit in Ethiopia using detailed firm‐level data collected in 2003. Its basic purpose is to identify the various attributes of a firm that determine its access to credit with an emphasis on the role of firm formality. We find that informal firms are more credit constrained compared to formal firms. A firm’s location, membership of a business association and maintaining an accounting record are found to be important determinants of access to credit. Further, we find firms whose owners have vocational training are more credit constrained than those who are not, as are firms that are exclusively male owned. There is no systematic relation between access to credit and a firm’s age, size and the sector in which it operates. The paper concludes with possible policy interventions designed to improve access to credit for MSEs in Ethiopia.     

Strategic freedom, constraint, and symmetry in one-period markets with cash and credit payment

Summary. In order to explain in a systematic way why certain combinations of market, financial, and legal structures may be intrinsic to certain capabilities to exchange real goods, we introduce criteria for abstracting the qualitative functions of markets. The criteria involve the number of strategic freedoms the combined institutions, considered as formalized strategic games, present to traders, the constraints they impose, and the symmetry with which those constraints are applied to the traders. We pay particular attention to what is required to make these strategic market games well-defined, and to make various solutions computable by the agents within the bounds on information and control they are assumed to have. As an application of these criteria, we present a complete taxonomy of the minimal one-period exchange economies with symmetric information and inside money. A natural hierarchy of market forms is observed to emerge, in which institutionally simpler markets are often found to be more suitable to fewer and less-diversified traders, while the institutionally richer markets only become functional as the size and diversity of their users gets large.Received: 5 June 2003, Revised: 18 November 2003, JEL Classification Numbers: C7, G10, G20, L10, D40, D50. Correspondence to: Eric SmithEric Smith, Martin Shubik: We are grateful to Lloyd Shapley, Duncan Foley, and Doyne Farmer for discussions in the course of this work.     

Associated consistency and equal allocation of nonseparable costs

Summary. We modified the definition of associated game with respect to Hamiache (2001) to characterize the equal allocation of nonseparable costs (EANS) by means of Pareto Optimality(PO), Translation Covariance (TC), Symmetry (SYM), Associated Consistency(AC) and Continuity(CONT).Received: 8 April 2004, Revised: 9 May 2005, JEL Classification Numbers: C71.The author is indebted to Clement Wen for many helpful comments and he is also very grateful to a referee who proposed several helpful comments to improve the paper.     

Health,time allocation and work: empirical evidence from Turkey

This article investigates the relationship between health status and time allocation decisions of individuals. Although many studies address impacts of health on labour supply, few studies explore associations of health status with non-market work activities. Using a nationally representative sample from a recent Turkish Time Use Survey, this article employs Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SUR) framework to estimate multiple equations of various time use categories. Consistent with literature, empirical results indicate that higher levels of self-reported health status (SRHS) are associated with more time spent in market work. However, better health level is negatively correlated with time spent in leisure and sleep. There is mixed evidence between self-reported health status (SRHS) and time spent on non-market work. There is a negative weak association between health and time devoted to personal care. Finally, demographics such as gender, age, education and marital status display correlations with time allocation of Turkish individuals.     

Directed credit,financial development and financial structure: theory and evidence

The recent initiative of the RBI in reviving the policy of directed credit allocation in a period dominated by the neoliberal philosophy necessitates reconsideration of the role of policy-directed credit allocation process on financial development and financial structure of firms. Introducing certain policy parameters, the paper attempts to model how financial development-financial structure interlinkage is influenced by the liberalization policies of the government. The theoretical construct is empirically verified using both aggregated and disaggregated (firm-level) data comprising a panel of 932 Indian manufacturing firms. Findings reveal that following the liberalization measures in the early 1990s, there has been a structural shift in the debt–equity ratio of firms, with equity market activities assuming prominence over time. As regards financial development, it has been observed that the withdrawal of DFIs specialized in term-lending activities in the early 2000s led to a significant increase in the degree of financing constraints faced by the manufacturing firms. This contradicts the basic premise of financial liberalization. The paper argues that under certain conditions, government intervention in the form of directed credit programmes would not only act as an effective instrument in ushering financial development, but also provide important guidelines in ensuring sustainability of institutions.     

Information disclosure, banking development and knowledge-driven growth

In this study we develop a knowledge-driven growth model which explicitly models the banking sector as monopolistically competitive. The main mechanism through which financial intermediaries affect the real economy is through the evaluation and provision of liquidity to R&D projects. We distinguish two scenarios. In the regime with information disclosure, banks are able to use the stock of information obtained by the banking industry from evaluating R&D projects. This information externality brings about efficiency improvements, thereby leading to a positive entry of banks, more bank-funded research and in turn positive economic growth. By contrast, in the regime with no information disclosure, it is not profitable for new banks to enter the industry. This implies that no more potential R&D projects can be evaluated and hence financed, thus leading the economy to a zero-growth equilibrium.     

Risk capital,private credit,and innovative production

Abstract Although ideas production plays a critical role for growth, there has been only a modicum of research on the role played by financial forces in fostering new inventions. Drawing on Schumpeterian growth theory, this paper tests the roles of risk capital and private credit in stimulating knowledge production. Using panel data for 77 countries over the period 1965–2009, we find that countries with more developed financial systems are more innovative. A stronger patent protection framework, on the other hand, curbs innovative production.