Predatory Pricing and the Speed of Antitrust Enforcement

A common complaint is that in certain industries antitrust action against predation istoo slow to ensure that a true victim can survive until the antitrust process has beenconcluded. This paper discusses, in the context of two recent antitrust cases, the sources of delay in the antitrust process, and different policy reforms aimed at speeding up the process or otherwise protecting a true victim.     

中国建设工程造价管理协会关于公布2020年第五批工程造价咨询企业信用评价结果的通知(中价协〔2021〕4号)

各有关单位:根据《中国建设工程造价管理协会关于印发<工程造价咨询企业信用评价管理办法>的通知》等有关规定,我们组织开展了2020年第五批工程造价咨询企业信用评价工作。经企业申报、各省工程造价管理协会(中价协专业工作委员会)初评,中价协组织专家终评等程序,对153家工程造价咨询企业信用评价等级进行了公示,公示期已满。现将2020年第五批工程造价咨询企业信用评价结果予以公布。     

Predatory pricing and foreclosure in telecommunications

The growing worldwide trend towards deregulation in the telecommunications industry is raising concerns about anticompetitive behaviour by the dominant carriers. This article reviews some of these concerns and gives examples of alleged anticompetitive behaviour by Canadian carriers. The author assesses the conditions under which predatory activities and foreclosure are likely to occur, and concludes that they may be made even more likely by regulation. He offers an evaluation of some alternative policy approaches.     

Predatory pricing and foreclosure in Canadian telecommunications

This article provides a historical perspective and current data on predatory pricing in the Canadian telecommunications industry. It is a rejoinder to another article in Telecommunications Policy, by Steven Globerman, which argued that tighter regulation of the Canadian telephone industry is unnecessary to prevent anticompetitive abuses in the industry. The author argues that predatory pricing has been an enduring feature of the industry, and precipitated the need for regulation in the first place. In the light of the evidence provided on activities and reorganization by the largest telephone company, it is argued that a high degree of deregulation has already taken place and regulators should contemplate means of reestablishing regulation.     

Subprime Lending and Real Estate Prices

This article establishes a theoretical and empirical link between the use of aggressive mortgage lending instruments, such as interest‐only, negative‐amortization or subprime mortgages, and the underlying house prices. Such instruments, which come into existence through innovation or financial deregulation, allow more borrowing than otherwise would occur in previously affordability‐constrained markets. Within the context of a model with an endogenous rent‐buy decision, we demonstrate that the supply of aggressive lending instruments temporarily increases the asset prices in the underlying market because agents find it more attractive to own or because their borrowing constraint is relaxed, or both. This result implies that the availability of aggressive mortgage lending instruments magnifies the real estate cycle and the effects of fundamental demand shocks. We empirically confirm the predictions of the model using recent subprime origination experience. In particular, we find that regions that receive a high concentration of aggressive lending instruments experience larger price increases and subsequent declines than areas with low concentration of such instruments. This result holds in the presence of various controls and instrumental variables.     

Residential-Mortgage Lending Discrimination and Lender-Risk-Compensating Policies

The Boston Federal Reserve study ( Munnell et al. 1996 ) concluded that illegal discrimination is a statistically significant contributor to the observed gap between white and minority residential-mortgage rejection rates. The Boston study speculated that discrimination arises because lenders do not equally apply risk compensation or mitigation policies for imperfect loans. Using the same 1990 Boston loan application data, our study specifically examines the relation between compensating policies and discrimination. Since compensating policies are encouraged by secondary-mortgage-market sale guidelines, we model both the lender's origination decision and its loan sale decision. Using a rule-based artificial-intelligence technique applied to each lender, we infer compensating policies (rules) that equally apply to all races and explain lending decisions. A minority-race indicator loses its statistical significance when an indicator of compensating-policy violations appears in the loan accept–reject equation. This result reflects the fact that the risk levels of marginal minority loans tend to be more extreme than those of marginal white loans. However, the result does not necessarily reject the existence of discrimination. Equally applied policies may be empirically indistinguishable from unfairly applied policies. In addition, equally applied policies may fail the adverse-impact doctrine if they do not serve a business necessity (such as profits). The industry's move away from discretionary, rule-based decisions to mortgage scoring answers the need for a decision framework that rigorously uses loan performance to evaluate all loan applicants fairly.     

Bank Real Estate Lending and the New England Capital Crunch

The stock of real estate loans held by New England banks has declined dramatically. Given the limited potential for real estate investments, weak demand for real estate loans is to be expected. However, supply as well as demand factors may account for some of the decline in bank real estate loans. This paper documents that bank lending for real estate may have been constrained by a capital crunch, whereby poorly capitalized banks shrank their assets, including real estate loans, to satisfy capital requirements. Because the loss of bank capital is so widespread in New England, bank-dependent borrowers may have difficulty obtaining real estate financing.     

Mortgage Lending, Sample Selection and Default

Traditional models of mortgage default suffer from sample-selection bias because they do not control for the loan approval process. This paper estimates a sample-selection-corrected default model using the 1990 Boston Federal Reserve loan application sample and the 1992 Federal Housing Authority (FHA) foreclosure sample. A single-equation FHA default model appears to suffer from substantial selection bias, but the bias primarily arises from the omission of credit history and other variables that are only in the application sample. Therefore, default models that contain detailed information on applicants may not suffer from substantial selection bias. Finally, a test for prejudice-based discrimination is developed and conducted, but the findings are inconclusive.     

Bank Regulatory Agreements and Real Estate Lending

Recent studies have found that banks with low capital ratios have significantly decreased their lending to the real estate sector. This correlation between real estate lending and bank capital could be the result of voluntary decisions by banks to recapitalize, or it could be the result of direct actions taken by bank regulators. We find that banks with low capital ratios reduce their real estate lending substantially more after formal regulatory actions have been initiated by regulators. Furthermore, this reduction in lending is particularly large for the categories of real estate borrowers most likely to be bank dependent.     

Standard Oil and Predatory Pricing: Myth Paralleling Fact

The Supreme Court in 1911, on the occasion of the first major test of the Sherman Act, ordered the dissolution of the Standard Oil Trust. In his 1958 paper John McGee argued that predatory pricing is, in general, irrational and, relying solely on the information in the Trial Record related to that decision, concluded that Standard Oil did not engage in predatory pricing. His paper has had an extraordinary influence on both antitrust policy in the United States and economic lore. This paper documents the breadth and scope of the influence of McGee’s paper and offers several possible explanations for it. We suggest four reasons: (1) the lack of a theoretical challenge for 25 years, (2) the failure of scholars to replicate McGee’s empirical findings, (3) the unique status of the Standard Oil case in the history of American antitrust and (4) the influence of the Chicago School on economic and legal thinking.     

Platform Mispricing and Lender Learning in Peer-to-Peer Lending

Review of Industrial Organization - We document how online lenders exploit a flawed, new pricing mechanism in a peer-to-peer lending platform: Prosper.com. Switching from auctions to a posted-price...     

On the Assessment of Default Risk in Commercial Mortgage Lending

This paper takes an initial step toward the development of an empirically-based model of default risk assessment in the commercial mortgage market. A review of existing empirical studies of residential mortgage and commercial loan default provides evidence for appropriate model specification and estimation. A simple default risk model for commercial mortgages is then developed based upon the generalized default risk models of Jackson and Kaserman [1980] and Vandell [1981]. The model is then examined for its ability to successfully handle a variety of situations and used to test the validity of traditional ratio analysis "rules-of-thumb" employed in commercial lending. Ratio tests are found generally to be inconsistent with an objective of constraining default risk below some maximum. Finally, a modified ratio analysis consistent with the model and with a constrained default risk strategy is introduced.     

商业银行房地产项目放贷初始决策研究

信贷业务是商业银行利润的主要来源,也是银行管理和决策中最复杂、最困难的金融业务之一,具备一个良好贷款资产结构和拥有大量较强盈利能力贷款资产是商业银行核心竞争力的重要体现之一.文章从银行视角出发,对房地产项目的放贷问题进行投资分析,由于该决策具有刚性,故传统投资分析方法足够对其评价;对某房地产新项目实例进行计算分析,采用以资本资产定价模型为基础的适用新模型确定折现率,取得了较好的效果,具有一定的现实应用意义.     

实施标准成本管理 提高成本管理水平

国家电网公司提出"建立成本标准体系,实施战略成本管理、作业成本管理和全过程成本管理,实现成本管理方式转型",将实施标准成本管理作为提高成本管理水平的重要手段.标准成本体系是科学采用工艺评估和时间分析而预先确定的消耗标准或费用标准,它代表在可达到的或可接受的业绩水平上的应有成本.在提出标准成本管理的特点和主要原则的基础上,提出了标准成本管理的实施步骤.     

碳汇两种概念的辨析及碳汇市场的发展

网络上对碳汇的概念有两种解释:一种解释为碳的聚集,另一种则解释为碳排放交易制度。根据《京都议定书》而引伸出的定义,应为后者,而国内大都翻译成了前者。这将导致人们对碳汇定义的误解。只有采用碳排放交易制度的定义才能更好地理解碳汇市场的诞生与发展。按照《京都议定书》的规定,目前的碳排放权交易可以划分为两种类型:一种是以项目为基础的减排量交易;二是以配额为基础的交易。碳排放权交易还有较大的发展空间。     

Mortgage Lending Discrimination and the Decision to Apply: A Methodological Note

Previous studies of lenders' decisions to accept or reject loan applications have not accounted for the possibility that lenders discourage written applications from members of protected classes, i.e., prescreening. This paper discusses how prescreening and self-selection may bias the measurement of discrimination. Estimation techniques are developed that test and correct for such bias whether or not information is available on non-applicants.     

The Role of Home Equity Lending in the Recent Mortgage Crisis

Home equity lending grew rapidly from 2000 to 2008 with balances more than tripling. In this article, we examine the role this phenomenon may have played in increasing aggregate default risk during the mortgage crisis. We also document a relationship between growth in home equity lending and high house price depreciation and first mortgage default during the downturn of 2006–2009. Line of credit growth is shown to be associated with large increases in nonowner‐occupied property purchases, suggesting that home equity lines of credit were tapped to fund such investments, exacerbating default rates during the market downturn.     

A Model of Localized Mortgage Lending Behavior*

Loan administration costs and the costs of search for information about risk are found to be determinants of spatial interest rate differentials. These costs are independent of dollar loan size; therefore, rational lending policies can produce higher interest rates (or lower term to maturity) in low-income communities. But the premium (lower maturity) should be related to lower loan size and risk differentials. Public policy should be directed toward compiling and verifying an information bank which would allow lenders to search efficiently for information about risk. An empirical methodology designed to test for mortgage deficiency in minority areas was developed through case studies. This indicated the utility of specifying the supply and demand for mortgages at the neighborhood level of aggregation. Trends in neighborhood property values were identified as important and overlooked measures of lending risk. Further exploration of the hypothesis that Spanish-speaking areas are mortgage deficient is suggested by the cases.     

资源位定律及其应用

本文首先从硬资源和软资源的角度分析了资源整合的机理：硬资源是互不相交的闭集，软资源是可以相互交叉的邻域（开集），软资源是资源整合的媒介，不同硬资源闭集的邻域的交集非空是资源整合的必要条件。接着，提出了关于经济系统资源整合的资源位第一定律和第二定律。资源位第一定律指出，经济系统所能整合的最少外部资源的强度等于包含该经济系统资源位的最小凸集的测度与其实际资源位集合的测度之差，并在此基础上提出了系统势力的概念。资源位第二定律是指，在经济系统的资源位已呈凸集的情况下．可以通过引进凸集外部的一个资源点，将资源位拓展为一个凸锥。在这种情况下，所整合的外部资源可以远远大于经济系统自身的资源。最后．根据这两个资源位定律，提出了经济发展的资源整合对策。     

Evaluating the Costs of Increased Lending in Low and Negative Growth Local Housing Markets

The literatures on default and the evaluation of low downpayment mortgage programs are extended by showing within an options pricing framework how differences in expected price appreciation trends across housing markets can influence default and, thereby, the cost of programs designed to increase mortgage liquidity. An equilibrium mortgage rate reflecting the risk premium required to compensate for expected default-related losses is endogenously determined within the model. Evaluating the entire process by which program losses arise strictly within a rigorous asset pricing framework has potentially important implications for policy evaluation, as the estimated present value of program losses in declining markets where expected default is high is quite sensitive to the choice of the discount rate. The implications of increased lending in low and negative price appreciation local markets are also investigated.