Bundled discounts: Strategic substitutes or complements?

Bundled discounts by pairs of otherwise independent firms play an increasingly important role as a strategic tool in several industries. Given that prices of firms competing for the same consumers are strategic complements, one would expect their discounts levels also to be strategic complements. However, in this paper we show that under some circumstances bundled discounts may be strategic substitutes. This occurs under vertically differentiated products where a low quality pair of producers may indeed prefer to lower its discount after an increase in the discount offered by a high quality pair of producers.     

A Model of Shareholder Discounts

Many companies supplying consumption goods and services provide their shareholders with price discounts. This paper presents a simple model describing shareholder discounts and consequent market equilibrium. It is found that shareholder discounts resemble many features of two-part tariffs. The welfare analysis shows that the equilibrium outcomes with shareholder discounts are Pareto inefficient. Compared with uniform pricing, shareholder discounts unambiguously increase major shareholders' wealth but their effects on consumers and society are generally ambiguous.     

On the socially optimal density of coin and banknote series: Do production costs really matter?

By adding denominations to their coin and banknote series central banks can increase the efficiency of cash payments. In practice, however, they opt for a denominational structure with a relatively low density. The literature holds that this is because of the production costs involved. To test this proposition, we introduce a per-denomination fixed cost into the matching model of Lee et al. (2005) and parameterize the model with data on the production of US dollar banknotes. Our simulations demonstrate that central banks could increase the density of their currency systems beyond the observed level without the efficiency gains for transactors being dwarfed by the additional production costs for the central bank itself. This suggests that the explanation for the low density rather lies with costs incurred by consumers and merchants - and anticipated by central banks - that are not yet in any of the extant models.     

Asymmetry in forward exchange rate bias: A puzzling result

In this paper we document that the hypothesis that the forward exchange rate discount is an unbiased predictor of future currency depreciation holds in periods when the forward US dollar is quoted at a premium against the Japanese yen and the Deutschmark, but fails when it is quoted at a discount for the post-Bretton Woods floating exchange rate era. Moreover, the observed asymmetry is statistically significant. This puzzling result remains to be explained.     

Money in occupied New Orleans, 1862–1868: A test of Selgin’s “salvaging” of Gresham’s Law

We examine the monetary experience of New Orleans when it was occupied during and immediately following the Civil War, using newly assembled data regarding the quantity and market value of the city’s municipal notes and the city’s fiscal position. Municipal notes, acceptable for taxes, circulated at face value in retail transactions (and at only a small discount in broker transactions) as long as their supply was sufficiently limited, and they fell out of circulation and were priced at a discount relative to interest-bearing municipal bonds, when concern arose about their overissue. The spontaneous rejection of New Orleans municipal notes exemplifies how choice in currency works when insufficiently backed money is not supported by legal tender laws.     

STAY OR LEAVE? CHOICE OF PLANT LOCATION WITH COST HETEROGENEITY

Using a two-country model, we examine location choices by two domestic firms when they serve only the domestic market and their cost structures differ. The findings indicate that whether the firm that has a greater incentive for foreign direct investment is more or less efficient depends on the differences in domestic and foreign marginal costs, trade costs, and the presence of fixed costs. Plant locations may not be uniquely determined. In particular, a small change in trade costs may reverse plant location. Moreover, a decrease in transport costs in the presence of foreign direct investment may deteriorate domestic welfare.     

Subjective random discounting and intertemporal choice

This paper provides an axiomatic foundation for a particular type of preference shock model called the random discounting representation where a decision maker believes that her discount factors change randomly over time. For this purpose, we formulate an infinite horizon extension of [E. Dekel, B. Lipman, A. Rustichini, Representing preferences with a unique subjective state space, Econometrica 69 (2001) 891-934], and identify the behavior that reduces all subjective uncertainties to those about future discount factors. We also show uniqueness of subjective belief about discount factors. Moreover, a behavioral comparison about preference for flexibility characterizes the condition that one's subjective belief second-order stochastically dominates the other. Finally, the resulting model is applied to a consumption-savings problem.     

Government guarantees and self-fulfilling speculative attacks

We develop a model in which government guarantees to banks’ foreign creditors are a root cause of self-fulfilling twin banking-currency crises. Absent guarantees, such crises are not possible. In the presence of guarantees banks borrow foreign currency, lend domestic currency and do not hedge the resulting exchange rate risk. With guarantees, banks will also renege on their foreign debts and declare bankruptcy when a devaluation occurs. We assume that the government is unable or unwilling to fully fund the resulting bailout via an explicit fiscal reform. These features of our model imply that government guarantees lead to self-fulfilling banking-currency crises.     

THE IMPACTS OF “SHOCK THERAPY” UNDER A BANKING CRISIS: EXPERIENCES FROM THREE LARGE BANK FAILURES IN JAPAN*

A bank failure can have various adverse consequences for clients; these adverse impacts differ depending on which bank takes over the failed banks’ operations. In this paper, we show how the new banks’ management strategies are important in mitigating the short‐ and long‐run consequences. We focus on the clients of three large failed Japanese banks and examine their responses in terms of increased bankruptcies and changes in market valuation after the banks’ operations were taken over. The results imply that the choice of “shock therapy” or “soft budget constraints” had dramatically different consequences in resolving the bad loan problems in Japan.     

Explaining foreign bank entrance in emerging markets

This paper provides a theoretical framework that can explain the empirical observation that foreign banks from industrialized countries tend to increase their involvement in emerging markets in periods of market instability. In this model, domestic banks have (through past lending operations) more soft information on their borrowers available compared to foreign banks. Foreign banks, however, have a superior screening technology that allows them to obtain more hard information about their borrowers’ investment projects. The model has an important implication: Foreign banks increase their market share when credit market conditions deteriorate. The rationale for this finding is that the comparative advantage of the domestic bank loses value in unstable credit market conditions. Thus, the advantage of having a screening technology becomes more important and allows the foreign bank to increase market share. In times of crisis hard information on projects is relatively more important than soft information on the borrower’s history.     

Modelling price competition across many markets (An application to the Spanish loans market)

The purpose of this work is the structural modelling of price competition in a product-differentiated industry in which many firms of varying size compete across many independent small markets, with the target of identifying price behaviour. We apply it to model competition among the more than 79 banks that were active in the Spanish loans market during the period 1983-1991, using micropanel data. A model in which national banks (as opposed to regional and local banks) fully internalize their cross-rate effects in pricing is selected as the model that best fits the data. Our framework allows us to estimate the dead-weight loss due to market power, and to decompose it assessing the part attributable to price coordination.     

Technical efficiency in the Chinese banking sector

This paper applies an innovative DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) model, the Inverse B-convex model, in order to investigate the technical efficiency of a representative sample of Chinese banks. The banks are ranked according to their efficiency over the period 1998-2008. The results paint a mixed picture of the Chinese banks' performance. The influence of firm size and ownership on bank efficiency is not observed. However, the study shows that overall efficiency improved over time, especially after the entry of China into the WTO. Policy implications are derived.     

延期支付下部分价格折扣的变质物品订货模型

一般的延期支付库存模型将产品采购价视为固定不变的,而实际商业活动中,价格折扣是供应商促销的一种常用手段。本文在进一步考虑"数量界限"的价格折扣问题的基础上,建立了一个延期支付下部分价格折扣的变质物品经济订购批量模型,分析了两种情况下订货商的最优订货策略,并用算例进行了说明。     

Location equilibrium with asymmetric firms: the role of licensing

It is known that if exogenous cost heterogeneities between the firms in a spatial duopoly model are large, then the model does not have a pure-strategy equilibrium in location choices. It is also known that when these heterogeneities are stochastically determined after firms choose their locations, spatial agglomeration can appear. To tackle these issues, the current paper modifies the spatial framework by allowing firms to exchange the cost-efficient production technology via royalties. It is shown that technology transfer guarantees the existence of a location equilibrium in pure strategies and that maximum differentiation appears in the market.     

The Value of Relationship Lending: Small Banks in an Era of Consolidation

Consolidation in the banking industry has caused concern about the survival of small banks. Empirical evidence, however, shows that small banks are performing better than larger banks in terms of loan growth and profitability. This paper investigates the determinants of such unexpected superior performance; in particular we posit that peculiarities of small banks, like their ability to lever on relationship lending, are good explanatory variables of their recent loan growth .     

On striking for a bargain between two completely informed agents

This paper provides a thorough equilibrium analysis of a wage contract negotiation model where the union must choose between strike and holdout between offers and counter-offers. When the union and the firm have different discount factors, delay in reaching an agreement may Pareto dominate many immediate agreements. We derive the exact bounds of equilibrium payoffs and characterize the equilibrium strategy profiles that support these extreme equilibrium payoffs for all discount factors. In particular, our analysis clarifies open issues on the maximal wage in this model when the union has a higher discount factor than the firm. We would like to thank Wilko Bolt, Gerard van der Laan, Michiel Keyzer, and an associate editor and the referee for their comments and suggestions. Quan Wen is grateful to the Tinbergen Institute and the Vrije Universiteit for their hospitality and generosity. This project is supported by Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), grant B45-271.     

THE EMPLOYMENT STRUCTURE OF COOPERATIVE BANKS – A TEST OF INSTITUTIONAL HYPOTHESES

We study the claim that, because of their institutional design, current cooperative banks differ in their employment decisions compared to other conventional banks. The success of cooperative banks in the past was grounded on efficiency advantages generated through peer‐monitoring, social sanctions, and institutional trust. Institutional economic theory and anecdotal historical evidence suggest that these core institutional mechanisms also had an effect on the employment structure of early credit cooperatives. By examining the employment structure of current cooperative banks, we aim to provide insights to the question of how and to what extent original institutional mechanisms of credit cooperatives may still be functional. We use administrative establishment data from Germany and compare employment structures of banks by legal form. The results indicate that cooperative banks in comparison with otherwise similar private and savings banks are characterized by more stable employment, an older workforce, more extensive training activities, and a more homogeneous composition of employees.     

Discounting and altruism to future decision-makers

Is discounting of future decision-makers’ consumption utilities consistent with “pure” altruism toward those decision-makers, that is, a concern that they are better off according to their own, likewise forward-looking, preferences? It turns out that the answer is positive for many but not all discount functions used in the economics literature. In particular, “hyperbolic” discounting of the form used by Phelps and Pollak (Rev. Econ. Studies 35 (1968) 201) and Laibson (Quart. J. Econ. 112 (1997) 443) is consistent with exponential altruism towards future generations. More generally, we establish a one-to-one relationship between discount functions and altruism weight systems, and provide sufficient, as well as necessary, conditions for discount functions to be consistent with pure altruism.     

封闭式基金折价均值回归研究——基于协整分析

以我国仍在交易的25支封闭式基金为研究对象,利用每支基金从上市第2年到2010年12月的交易价格和净值的周数据进行实证分析。运用恩格尔-格兰杰两步法并进行Johansen协整检验,证实了我国封闭式基金折价存在均值回归现象。同时,误差修正模型分析结果显示,25支样本基金中有22支基金的交易价格与净值的误差修正项显著,说明封闭式基金的交易价格和净值的变动均会影响基金折价,其中交易价格变动对折价的影响更大。最后,提出我国基金投资者可通过投资折价较大的封闭式基金获得超额收益。