Reforming Banks Without Destroying Their Productivity and Value

Government‐protected banking systems tend to blow up, imposing huge losses on taxpayers. In a recent much‐publicized book, The Bankers' New Clothes, Anat Admati and Martin Hellwig propose to fix this problem by forcing banks to maintain 25% of their assets in the form of equity rather than debt. But this author argues, the book overstates the benefits and understates the costs of the proposed reform, while also failing to identify additional necessary reforms. Because bank equity is not true equity, and equity must be evaluated only in relation to risk, increasing required book equity ratios will not necessarily reduce the risk of bank failure significantly. Raising equity requirements is also socially costly because it reduces banks' willingness to lend. When banks need to raise their equity‐to‐asset ratios, they often choose to do so by cutting back on new loans, rather than paying the high costs of raising new equity. The reduction in loan supply that comes from raising equity ratios can be substantial, and is not just a one‐time cost. Balancing the costs and benefits of higher equity implies a much lower required equity ratio than the 25% posited in The Bankers' New Clothes. Finally, because equity ratios relative to risk should be the focus of prudential regulation, additional regulatory policy reforms that strengthen incentives for more effective risk management are needed in addition to higher capital ratios.     

Structure,conduct and performance: a simultaneous equations approach

A simultaneous equations framework is used to study the relationship between structure, conduct and performance in US manufacturing in the 1980s and 1990s. The paper expands on earlier structure-conduct-performance studies by using a lag structure to signify that structure, conduct and performance do not affect one another contemporaneously. Findings support some aspects of the traditional structure-conduct-performance model, but challenge others. First, the data suggest that industry structure does not depend on current industry performance. Second, little evidence is found that industry conduct, proxied by advertising, is affected by industry structure. Third, results show that industry performance does not depend on industry conduct, though it is sensitive to industry structure. The main findings are that (1) concentration does not depend on firm profitability, though profitability depends on concentration, (2) advertising follows a process that is independent of the factors considered here, and (3) advertising seems to have no effect on profitability.     

The effects of unions and strikes on the rate of growth of total factor productivity in Canada

In this paper, the performance of the New Keynesian IS curve for the G7 countries is assessed. It is found that there is an IS puzzle for both the purely backward-looking as well as for the forward-looking IS curve. The real interest rate does not have a significantly negative effect on the output gap. Based on an extended specification of the IS curve, also including asset prices and monetary aggregates, a significantly negative interest rate effect on aggregate demand is found for all countries. This finding suggests that a richer specification of the IS curve in empirical work may be necessary in order to obtain an unbiased estimate of the effect of monetary policy on aggregate demand.     

THE 2009 LAWRENCE R. KLEIN LECTURE: DIVERSIFIED TREATMENT UNDER AMBIGUITY*

This article develops a broad theme about treatment under ambiguity through study of a particular decision criterion. The broad theme is that a planner may want to cope with ambiguity by diversification, assigning observationally identical persons to different treatments. Study of the minimax‐regret (MR) criterion substantiates the theme. The article significantly extends my earlier analysis of one‐period planning with an individualistic treatment and a linear welfare function. I show that MR treatment allocations are fractional in a large class of planning problems with nonlinear welfare functions, interacting treatments, learning, and noncooperative aspects.     

Auctions with costly information acquisition

We characterize optimal selling mechanisms in auction environments where bidders must incur a cost to learn their valuations. These mechanisms specify for each period, as a function of the bids in previous periods, which new potential buyers should be asked to bid. In addition, these mechanisms must induce the bidders to acquire information about their valuations and to reveal this information truthfully. Using a generalized Groves principle, we prove a very general “full extraction of the surplus” result: the seller can obtain the same profit as if he had full control over the bidders’ acquisition of information and could have observed directly their valuations once they are informed. We also present appealing implementations of the optimal mechanism in special cases. For helpful comments we thank George Deltas, David Martimort, an anonymous referee, and seminar participants in Mannheim, Rutgers, Tel Aviv, Toulouse, the Society for Economic Design 2002 conference in New York, and the 2003 North American Summer Meetings of the Econometric Society in Evanston, IL. Yossi Spiegel thanks the IIBR for financial assistance and Charles Zheng thanks the NSF for grant SES-0214471.     

The Action Logics of Environmental Leadership: A Developmental Perspective

This article examines how the action logics associated with the stages of consciousness development of organizational leaders can influence the meaning, which these leaders give to corporate greening and their capacity to consider the specific complexities, values, and demands of environmental issues. The article explores how the seven principal action logics identified by Rooke and Torbert (2005, Harvard Business Review 83(4), 66–76; Opportunist, Diplomat, Expert, Achiever, Individualist, Strategist and Alchemist) can affect environmental leadership. An examination of the strengths and limitations of these action logics reveals the relevance of the so-called post-conventional stages of consciousness to the recognition and effective management of complex environmental issues. Suggestions are also made for promoting organizational contexts conducive to the development of a post-conventional environmental leadership.     

The control of game form recognition in experiments: understanding dominant strategy failures in a simple two person “guessing” game

This paper focuses on instructions and procedures as the reasons that subjects fail to behave according to the predictions of game theory in two-person “guessing game” (beauty contest game) experiments. In this game, two individuals simultaneously choose a number between 0 and 100. The winner is the person whose chosen number is the closest to 2/3 of the average of the two numbers. The weakly dominant strategy is zero. Because of the simplicity of the game, the widespread failure of subjects to choose the weakly dominant strategy has been interpreted as evidence of some fundamental inability to behave strategically. By contrast, we find that subjects’ behavior reflects a lack of understanding of the game form, which we define as the relationships between possible choices, outcomes and payoffs. To a surprising degree, subjects seem to have little understanding of the experimental environment in which they are participating. If subjects do not understand the game form, the experimental control needed for testing game theory is lost. The experiments reported here demonstrate that the failure to act strategically is related to how the game is presented. We test how well subjects are able to recognize the game under a variety of different presentations of the game. Some subjects fail to recognize the game form when it is presented abstractly. When the game is transformed into a simple isomorphic game and presented in a familiar context, subjects do choose weakly dominant strategies. While our results confirm the ability of subjects to make strategic decisions, they also emphasize the need to understand the limitations of experimental subjects’ ability to grasp the game as the experimenter intends. Given these limitations, we provide suggestions for better experimental control.     

Trade-offs between carbon sequestration and rural incomes in the N’hambita Community Carbon Project, Mozambique

This paper presents a preliminary assessment of trade-offs between carbon sequestration and farmers’ incomes from land-use systems implemented in a community-based project, in Mozambique. Systems either focus on carbon sequestration or combine sequestration with cash crop cultivation. The latter provide carbon payments with potential income from cash crop sales. Uncertainty about the future costs and benefits of maintaining and utilizing the land-use systems over time is addressed via application of Monte Carlo simulations. Our results show that compared with sequestration-only systems those that combine sequestration and cash crop production have higher net benefits, although they have less carbon-sequestration potential. Homestead planting provides the most attractive balance among competing policy goals. Carbon payments contribute to cash income and may enable smallholders to overcome initial project investment costs.     

New project? Don't analyze--act

In a predictable world, getting a new initiative off the ground typically involves analyzing the market, creating a forecast, and writing a business plan. But what about in an unpredictable environment? The authors recommend looking to those who are experts in navigating extreme uncertainty while minimizing risk: serial entrepreneurs. These business leaders act, learn, and build their way into the future. Managers in traditional organizations can do the same, starting with smart, low-risk steps that follow simple rules: Use the means at hand; stay within an acceptable loss; secure only the commitment needed for the next step; bring along only volunteers; link the initiative to a business imperative; produce early results; and manage expectations. Momentum is gained by continuing to act based on what is learned at each step. The launch of Clorox's Green Works product line is discussed as an example.     

Real Estate,the External Finance Premium and Business Investment: A Quantitative Dynamic General Equilibrium Analysis

This article studies the connection between the capital market and the real estate market. Empirically, we find that positive real house price shocks lower the external finance premium and stimulate nonresidential investment and real gross domestic product (GDP). Our theoretical framework is able to mimic the volatility of the external finance premium, the relative price of real estate and capital and the investment in real estate and capital. It also captures the cyclicality of the external finance premium and of real estate prices. The contribution of real estate price fluctuations to the variability of the external finance premium and the GDP is confirmed to be significant.