Flight‐to‐safety and the credit crunch: a new history of the banking crises in France during the Great Depression†

Despite France's importance in the interwar world economy, the scale of the French banking crises of 1930–1 and their consequences have never been fully assessed quantitatively. The lack of banking regulation severely limited the availability of balance sheet data. Using a new dataset of individual balance sheets from more than 300 banks, this article shows that the crises were much more severe than previously thought, although they did not affect the main commercial banks. By reconstructing financial flows, this study shows that the fall in bank credit was mostly driven by a flight‐to‐safety by deposits, from banks to savings institutions and the central bank. The decrease in bank deposits due to bank runs was offset by an increase in deposits with savings institutions, with the central bank, and in cash hoarding, whereas the decrease in bank credit was not offset by an increase in loans from non‐bank financial institutions. In line with the gold standard mentality, cash deposited with savings institutions and the central bank was used to decrease marketable public debt and increase gold reserves, rather than pursuing countercyclical policies. Despite massive capital inflows and rising aggregate money supply, France suffered from a severe, persistent credit crunch.     

Exit Options in Corporate Finance: Liquidity versus Incentives

This paper provides a first study of the optimal design of active monitors'exit options in a problem involving a demand for liquidity and costly monitoring of the issuer. Optimal incentives to monitor the issuer may involve restricting the monitor's right to sell her claims on the firm's cash-flow early. But the monitor will then require a liquidity premium for holding such an illiquid claim. In general, therefore, there will be a trade off between incentives and liquidity. The paper highlights a fundamental complementarity between speculative monitoring in financial markets (which increases the informativeness of prices) and active monitoring inside the firm: in financial markets where price discovery is better and securities prices reflect the fundamentals of the issuer better, the incentive cost of greater liquidity may be smaller and active monitoring incentives may be preserved. The paper spells out the conditions under which more or less liquidity is warranted and applies the analysis to shed light on common exit provisions in venture capital financing.     

Demand fluctuations and capacity utilization under duopoly

Summary.  This paper studies the impact of uncertain demand on firms’ capacity decisions when they operate in an oligopolistic environment. We define a two-stage game where firms choose capacity in the first stage without knowing which state of Nature is going to realize, and output levels in the second, knowing which state is realized. We prove the existence of a symmetric subgame perfect equilibrium at which firms are in excess capacity compared with the capacity they would choose in the Cournot certainty equivalent game. Received: May 17, 1996; revised version July 31, 1996     

Price Competition When Consumersare Uncertain About Which Firm Sells Which Quality

In this paper we analyze the properties of price equilibria in a duopoly market where firms sell vertically differentiated products, consumers being uncertain about which firm sells which quality. Both existence and properties of price equilibria are characterized by the beliefs of the consumers' population about the distribution of quality between firms.     

现代金融业务创新条件架构的研究

在分业经营、分业管理体制下，实现有效的金融业务创新。本的研究采用理论与实际结合的方法，在对国内外金融业务创新进行研究的基础上，从不同的角度对金融业务创新界定了理论框架体系，分析了我国金融业务创新的条件与制约因素，提出了中国金融业务创新的现实选择和创新的思路对策。     

人民银行事后监督现状与发展趋势

当前,人民银行事后监督工作在管理体制、工作重心、相关制度、监督依据等方面存在诸多问题,有待我们研究探讨.     

Assessing Applied Protection across the World*

This paper presents MAcMap–HS‐6, a database providing a consistent, ad valorem equivalent measure of tariff duties and tariff rate quotas for 163 countries and 208 partners, at the six‐digit level of the Harmonized System (5111 products), accounting for all preferential agreements. We describe the methodology used to compute and aggregate an ad valorem equivalent of applied protection. Emphasis is placed on minimizing the endogeneity bias in the aggregation procedure, while acknowledging structural differences in export specialization. The resulting quantitative assessment is illustrated by giving an overview of applied protection across the world in 2001, in terms of average as well as distribution.     

Opportunistic tendencies in IJVS with the Japanese: The effects of culture,shared decision making,and relationship age

This study investigated how partners' self-reported opportunism and shared decision making varied by culture in international joint ventures (IJVs) with the Japanese. Data were gathered by a mail survey of senior officials in IJVs located in 11 host countries. Significant differences were found between partners from Western cultures and the Japanese, but not between other Asians and the Japanese. Indirect effects suggest that shared decision making neutralizes cultural tendencies toward opportunism. Results indicated that opportunistic tendencies did not diminish as the IJV relationship aged, and that shared decision making did diminish as the relationship aged.     

New Evidence on the Performance Advantages of Multihospital Systems

This study analyzes the performance effects of proprietary, multihospital systems. It is shown that the organizational structure of these systems may affect the operating costs of member hospitals. Estimating a cost function for Florida hospitals and controlling for other factors, the average costs of HUMANA hospitals are empirically about 17 percent lower, while the costs of other leading chains are about 12 percent lower than not-for-profit institutions. These results contrast with earlier studies that found no such differences. Furthermore, the cost differential that exists between system and non-system hospitals can be largely attributed to technical efficiencies arising from chain ownership.