Tests of ex ante versus ex post theories of collateral using private and public information

Collateral is a widely used, but not well understood, debt contracting feature. Two broad strands of theoretical literature explain collateral as arising from the existence of either ex ante private information or ex post incentive problems between borrowers and lenders. However, the extant empirical literature has been unable to isolate each of these effects. This paper attempts to do so using a credit registry that is unique in that it allows the researcher to have access to some private information about borrower risk that is unobserved by the lender. The data also include public information about borrower risk, loan contract terms, and ex post performance for both secured and unsecured loans. The results suggest that the ex post theories of collateral are empirically dominant, although the ex ante theories are also valid for customers with short borrower–lender relations that are relatively unknown to the lender.     

全面维修管理

摘要对全面维修管理所包含态度、战略、组织机构、设施、人力资源管理、计算机化的维修管理系统、持续改进以及丈档九个部分,做了详尽的论述     

The concept of absorptive capacity: Origins,content and practical relevance

Ever since the end of the Second World War there have been regular calls for a comprehensive and extensive “Marshall Plan” for Third World countries. One of the most popular lines of counter-argument is that developing countries do not even possess the necessary absorptive capacity to make effective use of larger international transfers of purchasing power. On the strength of this “Low Absorptive Capacity Thesis”, as S.P. Schatz called it in 1961¹, a politically unpleasant prlblem, yet one which represents a question of principle in development policy, has for years been dismissed or passed on to the fundamental planning departments of development aid institutions and to the representatives of science and research. What exactly lies behind this problem?     

Interstate banking and the payments system

Interstate banking will improve the efficiency of the payments system. This will occur because the number of handlings for multiple-bank payments (transit items) will fall and because some multiple-bank payments will be transformed into single-bank payments (on-us items). These effects are simulated using data on the current cross-section relationship between banking structure and check clearing patterns in a multinomial logit model. The Federal Reserve, which currently processes almost one-third of all checks, is predicted to lose 43 to 60 percent of its market share. The annual impact is expected to be gradual, however, since interstate banking will be phased in and because of offsetting growth in the total check clearing market.     

Consumer brand confusion: A conceptual framework

A definition and theoretical framework for consumer brand confusion are developed. Brand confusion is distinguished from related terms, such as uncertainty, miscomprehension, infringement, and deception. The factors affecting the likelihood of brand confusion are extended beyond stimulus similarity to include individual and situational factors, and propositions regarding the effects of individual and situational factors are developed. The value of a better understanding of consumer brand confusion to managers and policy makers is discussed.     

Market fragility and international market crashes

We extend the Pukthuanthong and Roll (2009) measure of integration to provide an estimate of systemic risk within international equity markets. Our measure indicates an increasing likelihood of market crashes. The conditional probability of market crashes increases substantially following increases of our risk measure. High levels of our risk measure indicate the probability of a global crash is greater than the probability of a local crash. That is, conditional on high levels of systemic risk, the probability of a severe crash across multiple markets is larger than the probability of a crash within a smaller number of markets.     

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Gold price dynamics and the role of uncertainty

This study focuses on the dynamics of the gold price against bonds, stocks and exchange rates based on a disaggregation of the underlying relationships across different frequencies applying a wavelet decomposition. To analyze joint extreme movements (i.e. tail dependence), we adopt a copula approach, which helps us to assess the dependence between the returns of gold and other assets in calm and turmoil market times and therefore the hedge and safe haven functions of gold. We also examine whether gold prices are directly affected by changes in macroeconomic uncertainty, economic policy uncertainty and/or CPI forecasters disagreement. Analyzing data for nine economies for a sample period starting in 1985, we find that the role of gold changes significantly after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008. Gold is unable to serve as a hedge or safe haven in the classical sense while the findings for the period prior to 2008 mostly suggest that gold is able to shield investors. Uncertainty measures display a surprising and time-varying relationship with the path of the gold price. While economic policy uncertainty is positively correlated with gold price changes, macroeconomic uncertainty and inflation uncertainty among forecasters are both negatively related to gold price changes.