Usury ceilings and bank lending behavior: Evidence from nineteenth century New York

Few pieces of economic regulation are ubiquitous as usury limits. Similarly, few economic principles are as widely accepted as the belief that interference with freely contracted prices leads to market distortions, and many studies of financial markets find that usury limits negatively affect credit availability. This study shows that when no regulatory authority monitors and stands ready to punish violators of the usury limit when intermediaries and borrowers form long-term relationships, banks and borrowers regularly contract for interest rates in excess of the usury ceiling. Time-series analysis reveals limited effects on credit availability when market rates exceed the usury ceiling. Cross-sectional analysis of individual loan contracts also shows that the positive effect of a long-term relationship offsets the negative effect of the usury limit on credit availability.     

Cambium non est mutuum: exchange and interest rates in medieval Europe

A major gap in our understanding of the medieval economy concerns interest rates, especially relating to commercial credit. Although direct evidence about interest rates is scattered and anecdotal, there is much more surviving information about exchange rates. Since both contemporaries and historians have suggested that exchange and rechange transactions could be used to disguise the charging of interest in order to circumvent the usury prohibition, it should be possible to back out implied interest rates from exchange rates. The analysis presented in this article is based on a new dataset of medieval exchange rates collected from commercial correspondence in the archive of Francesco di Marco Datini of Prato, c. 1383–1411. It demonstrates that the time value of money was consistently incorporated into market exchange rates. Moreover, these implicit interest rates are broadly comparable to those received from other types of commercial loan and investment. Although on average profitable, the return on any individual exchange and rechange transaction did involve a degree of uncertainty that may have justified their non‐usurious nature. However, there were also practical reasons why medieval merchants may have used foreign exchange transactions as a means of extending credit.     

Market and Welfare Effects of Mandatory Country‐of‐Origin Labeling in the U.S. Specialty Crops Sector: An Application to Fresh Market Apples

This study provides a new framework of analysis of the market and welfare effects of mandatory country‐of‐origin labeling (MCOOL) for fruits and vegetables that accounts for heterogeneous consumer preferences, differences in producer agronomic characteristics, and retailer market power. The market and welfare effects of MCOOL are shown to be case‐specific and dependent on the labeling costs at the farm and retail levels, the strength of consumer preference for domestic products, the market power of retailers, the marketing margin along the supply chain, and the relative costs of imported and domestic products. Simulation results for the U.S. market of fresh apples indicate that domestic producers are the most likely beneficiaries of MCOOL, followed by domestic consumers. Being unable to exercise market power on consumers or suppliers of fresh apples, retailers will lose if the implementation of MCOOL entails fixed costs. Imports of fresh apples decline after MCOOL introduction.     

The Determinants of Bank Rates in Local Consumer Lending Markets: Comparing Market and Institution-Level Results

Most previous studies of banking markets have given little attention to the potential competitive discipline provided by credit unions on consumer loan rates. After presenting a theoretical framework for understanding the impact credit unions should be expected to have, this article analyzes two pooled cross-section time-series samples—56 U.S. markets over the 1992-1998 period and 81 banks (within those markets) over the same period—with the focus on explaining bank rates for two types of consumer loans. Results confirm the previously observed role of market structure and strongly point to a significant role for credit unions in disciplining the exercise of market power by banks. At the institution level, where the impact of bank size, market share, and holding company status can be analyzed, the evidence supports both market power and scale economy rationales for bank loan pricing and hints at a multimarket contact influence.     

消费信贷离我们还有多远

我国的消费信贷政策已出台两年有余，尽管国家在政策上鼓励消费并采取了许多措施支持信贷消费，但由于受居民民入水平和消费信贷使用成本等因素的制约，消费信贷与普通消费者之间仍有一定难以接近的距离。因此，若要拉近消费信贷与普通消费者之间的距离，就必须增加居民收入，降低消费信贷成本，同时还必须进行配套改革，免除消费者的后顾之忧，建立和完善个人信用担保机制。     

Housing markets and the economy: the assessment

Housing markets have multiple interactions with the rest ofthe economy and these are surveyed in this paper. The driversof house prices include income, the housing stock, demography,credit availability, interest rates, and lagged appreciation,the latter a potential mechanism for overshooting. There israther less agreement on the determinants of new construction,though planning constraints are widely seen as a major issueand one of the causes of the UK housing affordability problem.The paper argues that housing collateral and downpayment constraintsare the key to understanding the role of house-price variationsin explaining medium-term consumption fluctuations. Institutionalvariations between countries and over time account for majordifferences in linkages between house prices and economic activity.This illuminates debates about how monetary and other policyshould react to house-price variations. The paper also discussesthe role of housing markets in explaining regional migrationand location decisions, intergenerational inequality, and restrictingaccess of the less affluent to public goods, such as good schools,which are capitalized in local house prices.     

Price‐Match Announcements in a Consumer Search Duopoly

Using a model of sequential search, we show that announcements to price‐match raise prices by altering consumer search behavior. First, price‐matching diminishes firms’ incentives to lower prices to attract consumers who have no search costs. Second, for consumers with positive search costs, price‐matching lowers the marginal benefit of search, inducing them to accept higher prices. Finally, price‐matching can lead to asymmetric equilibria where one firm runs fewer sales and both firms tend to offer smaller discounts than in a symmetric equilibrium. Price increases grow in the proportion of consumers who invoke price‐matching guarantees and in the level of equilibrium asymmetry.     

A crumbling legacy: The decline of African American insurance companies in contemporary America

African American insurance companies, since the 1960s, have experienced a significant decline in their profitability and stature. Because of recent racial desegregation, which in an economic sense consists of white-controlled businesses and black consumers increasing their interaction with each other, black insurers are waging an increasingly difficult struggle to survive. It appears the only way African American insurance companies can counteract this disturbing trend is to voluntarily merge into one “mega” company. Such a maneuver would empower consolidated black insurers to better serve African American consumers and to make definitive inroads in cultivating the burgeoning African consumer market.     

Competition Law as a Constraint on Monopolistic Exploitation by Sports Leagues and Clubs

The sports industry is characterized by dominant leagues andclubs exercising economic power unconstrained by rivals or thethreat of entry, often featuring market-division schemes. Leaguesand clubs can raise price, lower output, and lower quality tofans, create an artificial scarcity of top-tier teams resultingin publicly subsidized stadiums, and impose labour-market restraintsthat significantly harm consumers by misallocating players,most obviously by inhibiting low-quality teams' quick improvement.Business decisions made by club-run leagues feature significanttransaction costs, resulting in even greater inefficiency thanwould occur if leagues were controlled by a single entity. Manycountries have employed settled principles of competition law,originating in the common law of restraint of trade, as a usefuland meaningful constraint on the abuses of economic power insports. Courts have prohibited agreements between clubs or leaguesthat distort prices or output, or render output unresponsiveto consumer demand, unless the agreement is shown to be demonstrablynecessary to achieve a pro-competitive goal. In this paper,I argue that consumers and sports fans will benefit from a moreambitious enforcement of these established principles of competitionlaw.     

消费信贷对江苏省经济增长的影响研究——基于期限结构视角

从期限结构视角对江苏省2010—2020年短期消费信贷与中长期消费信贷的发展特点进行分析.采用江苏省2015—2020年不同期限消费信贷余额和GDP的时间序列数据,建立VAR模型.研究结果表明,短期消费信贷与中长期消费信贷均是江苏省经济增长的原因,且中长期消费信贷对经济增长的推动作用大于短期消费信贷对经济增长的推动作用.     

MICROFINANCE PENETRATION AND ITS INFLUENCE ON CREDIT CHOICE IN INDONESIA: EVIDENCE FROM A HOUSEHOLD PANEL SURVEY

This paper studies empirical determinants of how heterogeneous households are matched to different types of loan products in a credit market in Indonesia. A unique situation arose when a microfinance institution launched operations in our survey area during the survey period, and we utilized its market entry for conducting mixed logit analysis of households’ credit choices. Time-varying choice sets help us identify parameters regarding preferences for various credit attributes. Our results show that the new availability of small-scale loans without collateral requirement greatly increases households’ probability of obtaining credit overall. Households in self-employed business prefer formal credit as a stable financing source but are impeded in receiving it when they locate in a rural area, probably because of large transaction costs. The poorest households, however, might not be able to exploit new credit opportunities as much as richer households, even if the scale of credit is very small.     

我国消费信贷中个人信用制度建设的思考

消费信贷作为刺激消费、扩大内需、推动生产、拉动经济的重要举措,促进了我国消费市场的发展,也推动了个人信用制度建设的发展,但消费信贷中的违约风险也随之加大。本文根据我国消费信贷中个人信用制度的发展现状,围绕消费信贷来分析信用制度缺失对消费信贷带来的风险,从而提出了建立和完善行之有效的个人信用制度的政策建议。     

The role of market imperfections in the relationship between housing prices and household credit: Evidence from Taiwan

Given the credit market imperfections in Taiwan, this paper examines the threshold effects in the adjustment towards the long‐run equilibrium relationship between housing prices and household credit. The empirical findings verify the potential for regime shifts in the dynamically adjusted relationship between housing prices and household credit. Only when the benefits cover the cost of market imperfections, do housing and credit markets trigger convergence to their long‐run equilibrium. The hidden effect of the limitations on housing and credit markets is to raise the thresholds of the self‐adjustment mechanisms. As a result, economic boom‐bust cycles will be more severe and increase the fragility of financial sectors.     

Microcredit in Prefamine Ireland

Hundreds of independent, local, quasi-charitable microcredit societies, or “loan funds,” were lending to as many as 20% of Irish households in the mid-19th century. Their goal was to relieve poverty by providing credit to the “industrious poor” at competitive interest rates without public funding. They successfully mitigated informational, moral hazard, and enforcement problems, and operated at a surplus in a market where intermediation by the banks seems not to have been profitable. Loan fund activity offers new insights into capital formation in the 19th-century Irish economy and challenges traditional notions regarding the economic activities of the Irish poor. They are also relevant for economists studying current microcredit initiatives.     

An Experimental Analysis of Regulatory Interventions for Complex Pricing

Considerable evidence demonstrates that consumers make poor choices when facing complex multidimensional pricing schemes. The problem is clear but appropriate regulatory interventions less so. We study the efficacy of five different interventions to improve consumer decision making in an experimental context where subjects choose among a set of predefined phone plans involving nonlinear tariffs. We compare two types of intervention: information provision and consumer literacy training. We find that training about plan costs significantly improves decision quality, while providing information about plan value assists inexperienced decision makers, and visual feedback helps experienced decision makers. Implications for policy are discussed, mindful of heterogeneous consumer literacy and the infrequency with which consumers are actually “in the market” for a better phone service plan.     

A quantitative evaluation of the Housing Provident Fund program in China

The Housing Provident Fund (HPF) is the largest public housing program in China. It was created in 1999 to enhance homeownership. This program involves a mandatory saving scheme based on labor income. Past deposits are refunded when the worker purchases a house or retires. Moreover, the program provides mortgages at subsidized rates to facilitate these home purchases. I calibrate a heterogeneous-agent life-cycle model to quantify the effects of these polices. My analysis shows that a housing program with these features is expected to raise the rate of homeownership by 8.7 percentage points and to increase the average home size by 20%. I discuss the economic mechanisms by which these outcomes are achieved and which features of the HPF program are most effective. I also consider several extensions of the model such as requiring employers to contribute to the program and allowing renters to withdraw funds from the HPF.     

Credit Constraints in Manufacturing Enterprises in Africa

We investigate the question of whether firms in Africa's manufacturingsector are credit constrained. The fact that few firms obtaincredit is not sufficient to prove constraints, since certainfirms may not have a demand for credit while others may be refusedcredit as part of profit maximising behaviour by banks. To investigatethis question, we use direct evidence on whether firms had ademand of credit and whether their demand was satisfied in theformal credit market, based on panel data on firms in the manufacturingsector from six African countries. Of those firms with a demandfor credit, only a quarter obtained a formal sector loan. Ouranalysis suggests that while banks allocate credit on the basisof expected profits, micro or small firms are much less likelyto get a loan than large firms. We also find that outstandingdebt is positively related with obtaining further lending. Therole of outstanding debt is likely to be a reflection of inefficiencyin credit markets, while the fact that size matters is consistentwith a bias as well, although we cannot totally exclude thatthey reflect transactions costs on the part of banks. We presentan analysis showing how much more profitable small firms mustbe to obtain a loan than large firms.     

从次贷危机看消费信贷违约防范机制的失灵

本文以美国次贷危机为例,分析了消费信贷市场违约防范机制失灵的问题。本文指出,政府隐含担保的存在是导致消费信贷市场违约防范机制失灵的真正原因,可能使消费信贷市场出现大范围的违约并威胁整个金融体系的稳定。美国次级抵押贷款市场上爆发的危机不是偶然的,恰恰是消费信贷市场上违约风险防范机制失灵的一个集中反应。     

Consumer Credit Risk Management in an Emerging Market： The Case of China

I. Introduction By any measure, China is now the world hottest economy, with an astonishing annual real GDP growth rate of 9 percent from 1991 to 2003 and with the world’s largest population of nearly 1.3 billion people. As one of the world’s largest and fastest growing economies,Consumer Credit Risk Management in China87 ?2006 The Authors Journal compilation ?2006 Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences there are tremendous opportunities for glo…     

Do bank loans and local amenities explain Chinese urban house prices?

Based on Chinese city-level data from 1999 to 2012 and controlling for geological, environmental, and social diversity, our multi-step estimation suggests that credit plays a significant role in driving up house prices after the Great Recession, whereas property prices only influence bank lending before 2008. Local amenities such as higher education, green infrastructure, healthcare, and climate also positively affect house prices. Moreover, the impacts of bank loans on housing prices tend to be related to the level of amenities, suggesting that pooling macroeconomic and urban economic data may be important for housing market research in the future.