Lending attitude as a financial accelerator in a credit network economy

In existing literature, commercial banks are often considered mere financial intermediaries that facilitate the flow of credit in an imperfect credit market. However, as demonstrated in the history of financial instability, the behavior of financial institutions plays an important role. This paper examines how lenders’ attitudes affect macroeconomic performance. In our analysis, the economy is composed of multiple borrowers (firms) and one lender (bank). Each borrower is directly connected to the lender through its credit contract. At the same time, each borrower is indirectly connected to all the other borrowers within the credit network. Using this model, we execute computer simulations to examine the economic consequences of lending attitudes. The results of the simulations demonstrate that the bank’s lending attitude functions as a financial accelerator; that is, it significantly affects the dynamics of the economic system through the credit network. Consequently, the same level of exogenous shock generates completely different outcomes depending on the different lending attitudes. The results also show that there exists an optimal lending attitude that leads to high economic growth and a stable growth path.     

Costly State Verification with Varying Risk Preferences and Liability

Abstract.  In the scenario of loan contracts with costly state verification, we examine how the properties of the set of states, different risk preferences of debtors and varying liability of lenders affect the structure of optimal repayments. In particular, we show that with risk‐averse debtors, a general set of states, a constant observation cost and both unlimited and limited lender liability, the debtor is strictly better off revealing the true state of nature when his realized revenue is low, which implies that optimal debtor consumption has a downward jump around the single switch from observed to unobserved states. If the debtor can destroy revenue or if the debtor is risk neutral, this non‐monotonicity of consumption disappears. Moreover, given the loan size, there is more monitoring under debtor‐risk aversion than risk neutrality. We present simulations showing that a contract with unlimited lender liability and debtor‐risk aversion has a higher expected observation cost but a lower variance of consumption than a contract with limited lender liability. Finally, we discuss the problems of commitment to verification and contract renegotiation in this framework.     

International borrowing without commitment and informational lags: Choice under uncertainty

A series of recent studies in economic growth theory have considered a class of models of international borrowing where, in the absence of a perfect investment commitment, the borrowing constraint depends on the historical performances of the country. Thus, a better level of past economic activity gives a higher reputation, thereby increasing the possibility of accessing the international credit market. This note considers this problem in a stochastic setting based on the volatility of the internal net capital. We study how the optimal consumption level and the maximal expected welfare depend on the combined influence of the trajectory of past economic variables and the volatile environment. In particular, we show how the strength of the history effect and the relative weight of the historical performance depend on the degree of risk.     

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.     

The Design and Efficiency of Loyalty Rewards

The goal of this paper is to reexamine the optimal design and efficiency of loyalty rewards (LRs) in markets for final consumption goods. Although the literature to date has emphasized the role of LRs as endogenous switching costs (which distort the efficient allocation of consumers), l analyze instead the ability of alternative designs to foster consumer participation and increase total surplus. First, the efficiency of LRs depends on their specific design. A commitment to the price of repeat purchases can involve substantial efficiency gains by reducing price‐cost margins. However, discount policies imply higher future regular prices and are likely to reduce total surplus. Second, firms may prefer to set up inefficient rewards (discounts), especially in circumstances where a commitment to the price of repeat purchases triggers Coasian dynamics.     

Securitization and optimal retention under moral hazard

Securitization improves liquidity in capital markets by allowing originators to remove issued loans from its balance sheet and use the proceeds for other purposes. Securitization is often suspected of being one of the main reasons for the recent financial crisis. One concern is that securitization leads to moral hazard in lender screening and monitoring. By selling loans to investors and removing them from their books, banks have a lesser incentive to carefully evaluate and monitor borrowers’ credit quality to ensure that they can repay their loans. One problem in the literature is that the analysis of securitization is very general and suffers from a lack of specific security design analysis under asymmetric information. We address the moral hazard problem using a principal–agent model where the investor is the principal and the lender is the agent. We show that the optimal contract must contain a retention clause in the presence of moral hazard. The optimal retention is affected by tranching and credit enhancement.     

Gains from Wage Flexibility and the Zero Lower Bound*

We analyse the welfare impact of greater wage flexibility in the presence of an occasionally binding zero lower bound (ZLB) constraint on the nominal interest rate. We show that the ZLB constraint generally amplifies the adverse effects of greater wage flexibility on welfare when the central bank follows a conventional Taylor rule. When demand shocks are the driving force, the ZLB implies that an increase in wage flexibility reduces welfare even under the optimal monetary policy with commitment.     

Gains from Wage Flexibility and the Zero Lower Bound*

We analyse the welfare impact of greater wage flexibility in the presence of an occasionally binding zero lower bound (ZLB) constraint on the nominal interest rate. We show that the ZLB constraint generally amplifies the adverse effects of greater wage flexibility on welfare when the central bank follows a conventional Taylor rule. When demand shocks are the driving force, the ZLB implies that an increase in wage flexibility reduces welfare even under the optimal monetary policy with commitment.     

Inferring welfare maximizing treatment assignment under budget constraints

This paper concerns the problem of allocating a binary treatment among a target population based on observed covariates. The goal is to (i) maximize the mean social welfare arising from an eventual outcome distribution, when a budget constraint limits what fraction of the population can be treated and (ii) to infer the dual value, i.e. the minimum resources needed to attain a specific level of mean welfare via efficient treatment assignment. We consider a treatment allocation procedure based on sample data from randomized treatment assignment and derive asymptotic frequentist confidence interval for the welfare generated from it. We propose choosing the conditioning covariates through cross-validation. The methodology is applied to the efficient provision of anti-malaria bed net subsidies, using data from a randomized experiment conducted in Western Kenya. We find that subsidy allocation based on wealth, presence of children and possession of bank account can lead to a rise in subsidy use by about 9% points compared to allocation based on wealth only, and by 17% points compared to a purely random allocation.     

基于时间偏好不一致的最优关系租金与银企估值

基于时间偏好不一致性的理论框架,构建了银企合作的关系贷款模型,模型中银行的最优停贷决策被视为一项实物期权。数值结果表明,时间偏好不一致性会导致代理人选择更低的违约门槛,但借款人的融资成本会更高。在项目估值方面,相比时间偏好一致情形,具有时间偏好不一致特征的银行和企业项目价值都大幅减少。此外,幼稚型和成熟型代理人对比结果显示,幼稚型代理人的错误信念能够抑制由于时间偏好不一致而导致的违约风险上升,并且能够降低最优关系租金,从而减轻具有财务约束的企业的融资成本。构建的贷款模型不仅丰富了银企关系型借贷的相关理论研究,而且指出在代理人具有时间偏好不一致的条件下最优关系租金(融资成本)更高,这从行为金融的认知偏差角度为中小企业融资难、融资贵的困境提供了新的解释。     

Solving the liquidity constraint by options on futures

The aim of this paper is to show that an option on futures may solve the liquidity constraint problem. I consider a consumer (or an investor) who wishes to discount her future income in order to finance her present consumption (investment). Under asymmetric information, such an agent may incur a liquidity constraint (credit rationing). However, the optimal constrained consumption, as a function of future income, resembles a short position of a put option written on future income. This implies that allocating savings to a long call option position on futures may restore the unconstrained relationship between the optimal present consumption and future income. The option on a futures contract is constructed so that the (future) agent’s income is correlated with some futures contract (but this is private information) on which the option is issued. The allocation of savings of the borrower to the option on futures turns out to be financially beneficial compared to the allocation of savings to the risk-free investment.     

食品安全规制水平的选择与优化——基于社会福利函数的分析

食品安全规制水平影响着消费者的福利.基于社会福利最优的诉求,本文分别对功利主义、精英者以及罗尔斯社会福利函数形式下的食品安全最优规制水平进行了讨论,认为食品安全最优规制水平的选择,不但要考虑消费者的效用诉求、伦理约束,还要考虑消费者的健康权以及消费者食品安全认知的局限性.基于此,本文提出了对低收入者补贴的政策选择,在此政策下,最优的食品安全规制水平将高于功利主义社会福利函数形式下的最优规制水平,并且社会福利得到了改善.     

Implementation of competitive nonlinear pricing: tariffs with inclusive consumption

The paper studies how the optimal nonlinear quantity-payment allocation can be truthfully implemented by optional tariffs in a differentiated goods duopoly. Consumers choose from a menu of tariffs and are subsequently billed according to this. We find that implementation by simple two part tariffs may not be a feasible strategy in a duopoly because the optimal nonlinear tariff exhibits a convexity for lower quantities. We show that the optimal outcome can be implemented if the firms can use two part tariffs with inclusive consumption. The fixed fee includes a free consumption allowance, whereas subsequent consumption is charged according to a steep unit price. That way the firm is able to secure voluntary participation without violating the incentive constraint. The paper shows some examples from the telecommunications industry where firms offer two part tariffs with free call minutes to low demand segments.     

Using goal programming to determine interest group disutility for public policy choices

Within this paper a framework is developed for incorporating into the process of social choice both interest group preferences for social goals and the efficient allocation of limited resources. The social welfare function is adopted as the foundation for the framework and the goal programming algorithm is used to approximate the utility of the interest groups for their optimal policy choice. A function is defined which measures the disutility experienced by a social unit when a policy other than its optimal choice is selected. A surrogate measure of this disutility involving imposed preference weight changes for social goals is determined and its implications for use in developing the social welfare function are examined.     

The construction of empirical credit scoring rules based on maximization principles

We examine the econometric implications of the decision problem faced by a profit/utility-maximizing lender operating in a simple “double-binary” environment, where the two actions available are “approve” or “reject”, and the two states of the world are “pay back” or “default”. In practice, such decisions are often made by applying a fixed cutoff to the maximum likelihood estimate of a parametric model of the default probability. Following (Elliott and Lieli, 2007), we argue that this practice might contradict the lender’s economic objective and, using German loan data, we illustrate the use of “context-specific” cutoffs and an estimation method derived directly from the lender’s problem. We also provide a brief discussion of how to incorporate legal constraints, such as the prohibition of disparate treatment of potential borrowers, into the lender’s problem.     

Information acquisition,foreign bank entry,and credit allocation

This paper presents a theoretical framework to understand the impact of foreign bank entry on the access to and the price of credit for different types of firms. A major point of departure from the previous literature is that incumbents’ information about firms is endogenous in the model; previous screenings and lending relations of incumbents determine which type(s) of firms they can identify. I show that incumbents’ information is negatively correlated with the quality of borrowers. Moreover, although a priori entrants have a comparative advantage in lending to transparent firms, previous lending relations of incumbents might reverse this relation. In particular, given that transparent firms are the only type screened before the entry and therefore they are the only type distinguishable by incumbents, entrants might have a comparative advantage in lending to opaque firms. The analysis provides new insights into the inconclusive evidence of the literature regarding entrants’ credit allocation.     

Why Do Mortgage Markets Matter?

1999 saw the return of large scale mortgage equity - ie mortgage borrowing to finance consumption rather than house purchase - for the first time for a decade. Recent developments of the OEF macroeconometric model of the UK economy have focused on the determination of mortgage lending, looking in particular at the impact of downpayment constraints - ie the deposit borrowers have to put down when they buy a house. In this article, Geoffrey Meen uses this model to analyse the effects of mortgages on: (i) the cycle in the UK housing market at a national level; (ii) regional house price differentials; and (iii) aggregate savings and consumer behaviour.     

Using your regular contacts as collateral: The information value of call logs

This paper aims to uncover the deterrent effect of external social ties on online peer-to-peer lending by extracting valuable information from the phone usage data. Contrary to the studies viewing online internal friendships as the signal of credit quality, we find that the total number of outgoing calls made in the month before loan requests is positively associated with the probability of default, which suggests that more social interactions offline mediated by mobile phones are more likely to signal poor trustworthiness. Only the features pertaining to the calls made during the morning for a given day have the potential as an effective predictor for the borrower’s credible social collateral. However, the online peer-to-peer lending platform studied by us fails to perfectly judge borrowers by their external social ties since the total number of outgoing calls generally has a negative relationship with the interest rates charged for funded loans. Overall, our work advances the understanding of the economic value carried by call logs in the context of disintermediated financial markets with information asymmetry.     

Foreign bank lending during a crisis: The impact of financial regulations

This study examines foreign bank lending during crises by using data on 1,558 individual banks in Asian and Latin American countries during the period 1987-2013. Our results reveal that, in a crisis period, Asian banks with a higher level of foreign ownership tend to reduce their lending. Nevertheless, during crises banks consistently increase their lending in order to support their borrowers; in fact, in Latin America, crises stimulate foreign banks to lend more. Our evidence on lending during a crisis supports credit rationing theories with a flight to quality. The international substitution effect also holds based on our results. Taking financial structures and regulation into consideration, for banks with more foreign ownership in a highly concentrated financial system in Asia, the crisis has less effect on a cut in lending, while it has a greater effect on cuts in lending for countries with a higher level of government-owned assets. This paper contributes to the existing literature on the bank lending channel and provides implications for policymakers.     

Welfare comparisons of income distributions and family size: An individualistic approach

We investigate the problem of how to perform comparisons of income distributions across families of different sizes. We argue that social welfare ought to be computed as the average individual utility instead of the average household utility as in most known criteria. We provide dominance criteria which allow for some indeterminacy about the average optimal family size, by resorting to the bounded approach to dominance analysis proposed by Fleurbaey et al. (2003). Indeed, when differences in needs come from family size, a specific population allocation problem (how a population should be optimally divided over families for given resources) adds to the usual income allocation problem. Pro-family and anti-family stances are introduced in order to make explicit the choice of an optimal family size. An application to French data shows that shifting from the household to the individualistic point of view can substantially alter the outlook of dominance results.