National Culture and Default on Mortgages

In this paper, we investigate the relationship between national cultural characteristics and default on mortgages (DOM). Using Hofstede's constructs and controlling for other relevant determinants of DOM, our regression analyses show that borrowers from countries with high individualism may default more on their mortgages in both a relatively stable economic period and during a period of crisis. Moreover, we find that borrowers from societies showing lower level of pragmatism and higher level of indulgence default more on their mortgages in a stable economic period. Our findings suggest important implications for multinational financial institutions that provide mortgages across countries.     

The Effects of Market Concentration and Horizontal Mergers on Hospital Costs and Prices

Antitrust advocates believe that horizontal consolidation in hospital markets can reduce competition and increase prices while merger advocates believe it can benefit consumers by reducing service duplication. This study analyzed the market conditions, operating characteristics, and costs and prices of approximately 3500 short-term general hospitals (including 112 within-market-area mergers) from 1986 to 1994 to investigate the effects of market concentration, hospital mergers, and managed care penetration. The results show: a shift away from non-price competition toward price competition in health care markets; that this shift was fueled by increased market penetration by price-sensitive buyers; that horizontal hospital mergers produced average cost savings of approximately 5%, which were generally passed on to consumers as lower prices; that cost savings were generally greater for mergers of similar-size hospitals, with a higher degree of duplicative services, and with lower pre-merger occupancy rates; and some evidence that post-merger price reductions were smaller in less-competitive markets.     

Impact of mortgage soft information in loan pricing on default prediction using machine learning

We analyze the impact of soft information on US mortgages for default prediction and provide a new measure for lender soft information that is based on the interest rates offered to borrowers and incremental to public hard information. Hard and soft information provide for a variation in annual default probabilities of approximately 3%. Soft information has a lesser impact over time and time since origination. Lenders rely more on soft information for high-risk borrowers. Our study evidences the importance of soft information collected at loan origination.     

Credit access for high-risk borrowers in financially concentrated markets: Do SBA loan guarantees help?

The Small Business Administration's (SBA) loan guarantee program was established to correct financial capital market inefficiencies and improve small business access to financial capital. However, the SBA loan guarantee program has been criticized for its failure to improve the performance of financial capital markets available to small businesses. This study considers the financial capital market failure created by lenders' monopoly power (specifically, financial market concentration) in financial capital markets. Based on this potential market failure, a model is derived to evaluate the behavior of lenders and borrowers in financial capital markets. Using the national Survey of Small Business Finance, this study compares the financial characteristics of small business borrowers with and without SBA loan guarantees, and provides a qualitative assessment of the SBA's ability to correct financial capital market inefficiencies. When considering only the interaction between borrower quality and the degree of financial market concentration, high-risk borrowers in high concentration financial markets have a higher probability of receiving an SBA loan guarantee than low-risk borrowers in low concentration financial markets. However, when other factors influencing the demand for financial capital are included in the model, only the borrower attributes (credit risk and age) are significant. While the SBA loan guarantee program appears to partially mitigate the effects of the market failure caused by financial market concentration for high-risk borrowers, the program appears to be better designed to address borrower risk, rather than credit market failure.     

Objective measures as a predictor of late payments by high‐risk borrowers

Manufactured homes (also known outside the US as prefabricated homes) are a viable housing option for low‐income buyers, but traditional mortgages are not available for purchase of manufactured homes because of a perception of higher risk of default among purchasers of manufactured homes. Research suggests that creditscoring models which incorporate objective data such as income, debt‐to‐income ratio and credit history result in an accurate and objective predictive tool to estimate likelihood of late payments and default among traditional home buyers. This study showed that these same models can be applied similarly to purchasers of manufactured homes. A Tobit model was developed to evaluate which factors most accurately predict default and late payment behaviour among borrowers who purchased a manufactured home. The model showed that when decomposed into the probability of making a late payment and number of late payments, credit score and income are both significant predictors in both sets of borrowers of both the probability of making a late payment and the number of late payments. The higher the credit score, the less likely the borrower is to make a late payment.     

Institutionalizing Ethics in Institutional Voids: Building Positive Ethical Strength to Serve Women Microfinance Borrowers in Negative Contexts

This study examines whether microfinance institutions (MFIs) that serve women borrowers at the base of the economic pyramid are likely to adopt a written code of positive organizational ethics (POE). Using econometric analysis of operational and economic data of a sample of MFIs from across the world, we find that two contextual factors—poverty level and lack of women’s empowerment—moderate the influence of an MFI’s percentage of women borrowers on the probability of the MFI having a POE code. MFIs that serve more women borrowers are more likely to adopt a POE code, especially in negative contexts (where women borrowers face poverty and disempowerment and are therefore susceptible to abuse). This study provides evidence that MFIs can build positive ethical strength in negative contexts.     

Retail Market Power in a Shopping Basket Model of Supermarket Competition

Supermarket retailers typically operate with relatively low margins, suggesting a highly competitive retail environment. However, despite the fact that consumers purchase an entire shopping basket at a time from supermarkets, this evidence is largely based on models of retail competition with single-category purchases. In this paper, we develop and test an empirical model of retail price competition that explicitly accounts for the effect of demand complementarity among items in consumer shopping baskets. Relative to the case where consumers purchase products with independent demands, we demonstrate that equilibrium prices are higher for all items when retailers take demand-complementarity into account. Our findings indicate that non-price strategies intended to encourage complementarity, such as co-merchandising, strategic shelf-positioning, or featuring complementary goods tend to soften price competition, and lead to higher equilibrium prices.     

Economics of Consumer Class Actions*

The consumer class action has been hailed as the ultimate consumer remedy. It permits economies of scale in some legal proceedings which may benefit the consumer. Moreover, government agencies will not ordinarily bring suit on behalf of one of these consumers but they will, in some cases, sue on behalf of the class. In the case of a harmful commodity, if a class action is successfully adjudicated disutility is lowered for those harmed and social benefits (i.e., collective benefits) may accrue in some measure to those for whom damage was averted. Whether in the short run or the extent to which in the long run prices will be increased as a result of the adjudication of a class action depends upon the degree of competition in the market in which the producing firm operates and on the level and elasticity of the relevant supply and demand curves for the product subsequent to the suit. Even without suit being brought the effect of the threat posed by the availability of the consumer class action will be a shift to a higher quality of product and more non-price competition on the basis of quality or at least a reduction of fraud and of harmful product attributes. The overall effect of the class action being available as a legal tool should be a better performing market and better performing agencies serving the consumer. Though consumer economic welfare will not always be increased through the use of the class action, its increased use is important if we are to have a more equitable economy.     

基于现代信息技术的营销组合决策研究

本文以现代信息技术为主要手段,以营销组合模型的构建和应用为研究对象,通过在非价格营销因素的市场反应模型的基础上引入非价格因素的递延效应,对价格与非价格营销因素组合原理和方法进行研究;通过论述价格与非价格营销因素之间的相互影响及其组合效应,构建了价格与非价格营销因素的组合决策模型;基于已构建的市场反应模型和营销组合模型,研发了具有高度人机交互性和可操作性的营销决策支持系统,并以模拟数据验证了模型的有效性。     

A Taxonomy of Consumer Satisfaction/Dissatisfaction Measures

Government and business have become more concerned with measuring market performance in terms of consumer satisfactions and dissatisfactions (CS/D). This article is concerned with the question of how one ought to measure CS/D. It offers a taxonomy of alternative CS/D measures and presents data from a national urban study of consumer complaints to evaluate four of the proposed categories. Biases in several scales are identified and recommendations are offered for needed improvements in these measures for future CS/D research. Measures of initial non-price problems and unsatisfied non-price voiced complaints appear to be the preferred measures given our present state of knowledge.     

营销创新:低价竞争向非价格竞争转变的基本途径

中国企业参与国际竞争日益激烈,顾客价格敏感度下降,价格竞争空间越来越小。中国企业应走出常规思维定势,改变长期一贯的低价营销行为,通过营销创新逐步增强企业的自主创新能力,实现从低价竞争向非价格竞争的转变。     

不合规格的住房抵押贷款证券化的研究

美国住房抵押贷款证券化市场的主体是三家政府特许的机构,它们只对符合规格的抵押贷款进行证券化。而其他不合规格的抵押贷款只能由私人机构代理其证券化业务,并需要进行一定的信用提高,这称为非代理住房抵押贷款支持的证券。对这类贷款的信用质量及其所支持证券的信用增级技术进行了探讨,研究评级机构计算信用提高程度的方法,以期对非政府支持的住房抵押贷款证券化给予一些借鉴作用。     

Spatial competition and market power in banking

Banks in non-metropolitan areas compete in a spatially differentiated environment. Non-metro community banks have been insulated from increasing competition from metro banks due to their reliance on soft information in relationship lending. Proximity to borrowers, therefore, may be an important source of market power for non-metro community banks. This paper estimates a structural model of the supply and demand of banking services in which pricing power is allowed to depend explicitly on the distance between rival banks. A spatial autoregressive econometric model shows that approximately 38.0% of economic surplus earned by firms in non-metropolitan banking in the upper midwest is due to spatial market power.     

Banking relationship and default priority in consumer credit: Evidence from Thai microdata

Banks play an important role in consumer credit, and when borrowers face a decision on whether to default on mortgage or non-mortgage loans first, banking relationship may matter. Our study provides first evidence into the interplay between banking relationship and consumer default priority via credit bureau data of 1 million individuals in Thailand. We find that same-bank borrowers are less likely to default on mortgage loans first, and borrowers with longer banking relationship and lower switching cost are more likely to default on mortgage loans first (which is welfare-improving). Our results suggest that banking relationship can lead to better outcomes for defaulting borrowers even when switching cost is high.     

Price formation in channels of distribution with differentiated products: Theory and empirical evidence

This paper presents a theoretical and empirical study of price formation in markets where goods differ in two attributes, perceived quality of each variety, and service provided by the store where the good is sold. Price competition in the vertically differentiated market is modeled as a two-stage game where manufacturers choose the contract that determines wholesale prices, and retailers choose consumer prices. One important novelty of the paper is that it contemplates competition between brands of different quality in the same store, and competition between brands of the same quality sold at different stores. This is in fact the situation observed in the domestic detergent market and the predictions of the model can be used to guide the empirical analysis of the data available for such market in the area of Barcelona, Spain.     

Advertising competition and industry channel structure

The introduction of independent retailers has long been recognized as a buffer that alleviates the price competition between channels. In this paper, we argue that this effect may be counter-balanced if the manufacturers compete along dimensions that differ from prices (such as advertising). We find that delegating to retailers may intensify other non-price competition between the manufacturers and therefore make the manufacturers worse off. Our analysis shows that the “retailer buffer” may be a two-edged sword and thus suggests that channel structure may critically depend on the specific dimensions along which the manufacturers compete with each other.     

Competition,External Economies of Scale,and Unionized Wage

We provide a rationale for the mixed relationship between product market competition and unionized wage, and more importantly, for a generally unexplained empirical evidence of a positive relationship between product market competition and unionized wage. We show that a higher product market competition decreases (increases) unionized wage if the external scale economies are weak (strong). However, a higher product market competition may decrease or increase the unionized wage if the external scale economies are moderate.

     

我国农村文化产业投融资：困境与对策

我国农村文化产业投融资面临着缺少稳定的抵押物、企业抵押担保能力不足以及企业经营风险较大的困难。＂三权＂抵押是农村文化产业投融资的重要平台。我国一些省份已在农村试点了＂三权＂抵押贷款,并取得了良好的社会效应和经济效应,为农村文化产业的＂三权＂抵押贷款提供了借鉴和有力的支撑。要在全国全面推广＂三权＂抵押贷款还面临着很多困难,如：缺乏立法的支撑;土地价值还无法得到有效的评估,农民利益无法得到保障;土地市场交易平台发展受限,抵押变现较为困难等。     

How Can Internet Comparison Sites Work Optimally for Consumers?

In today's information society, there is such a large amount of available information about any given good or service that consumers are unable to make an informed choice. Internet comparison sites (ICSs) could provide a solution to this problem by comparing markets for consumers and making a comprehensive recommendation. However, currently, they are not fully effective for consumers. Consumers do not trust ICSs because of concerns about commission biases and lack of full market coverage. To be fully effective, ICSs also ought to cover non-price dimensions such as product quality and after-sales service. Changing the economic model from the current two-sided platform to a one-sided platform could solve these problems. In order for this to occur, changes or clarifications to existing EU consumer laws might need to be made.     

Retailer Advertising and Retail Competition in the UK

Radical changes have occurred in distribution in the UK over the past three decades. These structural changes have stimulated most retailers to increase their real advertising expenditure. The author analyses the main factors that have brought about the growing intensity of retail advertising as a form of non-price competition.