The Common Tragedy of Regulations

Political Economy,

On Debt Service and Renegotiation when Debt-holders Are More Strategic

The contingent claims analysis of the firm financing often presents a debt renegotiation game with a passive bank which does not use strategically its capability to force liquidation, contrary towhat is observed in practice. The first purpose of this paper is to introduce more strategic bank behaviour into the continuous-time model developed by Mella-Barral and Perraudin (1997) and Hackbarth, Hennessy, and Leland (2007). Its second purpose is to account for variations in the information obtained by the parties during the contract period. We show that with public information and private debt only, the optimal probability of debt renegotiation is fixed by the firm's anticipated liquidation value. When we add public debt and asymmetric information, the good-type firm may be tempted to mimic the bad-type to reduce its debt service. We show that to deter such mimicking, banks may sometimes refuse to renegotiate with strong firms having a low liquidation value. Our results are in line with the empirical observation that recovery rate at emergence of bankruptcy is function of the share of private debt in all the firm's debt and is relatively low.Debt service, debt renegotiation, recovery rate, strategic bank, bankruptcy, contingent claim

Practices

We examine an economy where professionals provide services to clients and where a professional can sell his practice to another. Professionals vary in quality, and clients in their need (or willingness-to-pay) for high-quality service. efficiency is measured as the number of matches between high-quality professionals and high-need clients. However, agent types are unobservable a priori. We find that trade in practices can facilitate the transmission of information about agent types; sometimes full efficiency is achieved. In cases where it is not, a tax on the sale of practices (based on the seller's age) can be used to achieve full efficiency. In addition, a ceiling on the price of services can be used to adjust the distribution of surplus between clients and professionals, while preserving efficiency.signaling, professional services, practices, goodwill

Point-record driving licence and road safety : an economic approach

Les permis de conduire à points sont aujourd'hui très largement utilisés pour faire respecter les politiques de sécurité routière, avec toutefois des mises en oeuvre diverses selon les pays et parfois à l'intérieur d'un même pays. Comme toute sanction non-monétaire, priver les contrevenants de leur permis permet aux autorités publiques de retirer de la route les individus dangereux et aussi de dissuader les conducteurs normaux d'enfreindre le code de la route. Nous analysons les caractéristiques souhaitables des mécanismes de permis à points et, en particulier, nous étudions s'ils devraient inclure des clauses de récupération des points perdus et des périodes probatoires. Nous envisageons également la possibilité d'un retrait immédiat du permis de conduire pour les infractions les plus graves.

Healt care network formation and policyholders'welfare

We develop a model in which two insurers and two health care providers compete for a fixed mass of policyholders. Insurers compete in premium and offer coverage against financial consequences of health risk. They have the possibility to sign agreements with providers to establish a health care network. Providers, partially altruistic, are horizontally differentiated with respect to their physical address. They choose the health care quality and compete in price. First, we show that policyholders are better off under a competition between conventional insurance rather than under a competition between integrated insurers (Managed Care Organizations). Second, we reveal that the competition between a conventional insurer and a Managed Care Organization (MCO) leads to a similar equilibrium than the competition between two MCOs characterized by a different objective i.e. private versus mutual. Third, we point out that the ex ante providers' horizontal differentiation leads to an exclusionary equilibriumin which both insurers select one distinct provider. This result is in sharp contrast with frameworks that introduce the concept of option value to model the (ex post) horizontal differentiation between providers.Health Care Network, Horizontal Differentiation, HealthCare Quality

Agricultural Trade, Biodiversity Effects and Food Price Volatility

Production risks in agriculture due to biotic elements such as pests create biodiversity effects that impede productivity. Pesticides reduce these effects but are damaging for the environment and human health. When regulating farming practices, governments weigh these side-effects against the competitiveness of their agriculture. In a Ricardian two-country setup, we show that free trade results in an incomplete production specialization, that restrictions on pesticides are generally more stringent than under autarky and that trade increases the price volatility of crops produced by both countries and some of the specialized crops. If biodiversity effects are large, the price volatility of all crops is larger than under autarky

Practices

We examine an economy where professionals provide services to clients and where a professional can sell his practice to another. Professionals vary in quality, and clients in their need (or willingness-to-pay) for high-quality service. efficiency is measured as the number of matches between high-quality professionals and high-need clients. However, agent types are unobservable a priori. We find that trade in practices can facilitate the transmission of information about agent types; sometimes full efficiency is achieved. In cases where it is not, a tax on the sale of practices (based on the seller's age) can be used to achieve full efficiency. In addition, a ceiling on the price of services can be used to adjust the distribution of surplus between clients and professionals, while preserving efficiency

Fraudulent Claims and Nitpicky Insurers

Insurance fraud is a major source of inefficiency in insurance markets. A self-justification of fraudulent behavior is that insurers are bad payers who start nitpicking if an opportunity arises, even in circum- stances where the good-faith of policyholders is not in dispute. We relate this nitpicking activity to the inability of insurers to commit to their auditing strategy. Reducing the indemnity payments acts as an incentive device for the insurer since auditing is profitable even if the claim is not fraudulent. We show that optimal indemnity cuts are bounded above and that nitpicking remains optimal even if it induces adverse effects on policyholders' moral standards