Credit rationing, bankruptcy cost, and the optimal debt contract for small business

An examination of whether the costly random verification scheme affects the optimal debt contract for small business. It finds, contrary to Townsend (1979) and Williamson (1986, 1987), that the standard debt contract is the optimal debt contract with the costly random verification scheme.Discrimination in consumer credit ; Bankruptcy ; Debt ; Small business

Financial Structure and Aggregate Economic Activity: An Overview

This paper surveys literature which explores the possible links between the financial system and aggregate economic behavior. The survey is in two parts: The first reviews the traditional work and the second discusses new research.

Workers' Compensation Insurance In North America: Lessons for Victoria?

Among the issues we will consider here are the following. Who carries the underwriting(insurance) risk for workers' compensation benefits? How is workers' compensation insuranceprices, and by whom? What fundamental principles guide the insurance pricing system? Whomonitors benefits for compliance with statutory requirements? Are the availability of coverageand the payment of insurers' claims obligations guaranteed? Is self-insurance allowed and, if so, for whom? How are incentives for prevention of accidents, and resulting workers' compensation claims, maintained? What is the performance of the overall system? In summary, how are these questions answered and what so the answers reveal about how these responsibilities are allocated among government agencies, other public entities and private firms

Rural Financial Markets in Developing Countries

This review examines portions of the vast literature on rural financial markets and household behavior in the face of risk and uncertainty. We place particular emphasis on studying the important role of financial intermediaries, competition and regulation in shaping the changing structure and organization of rural markets, rather than on household strategies and bilateral contracting. Our goal is to provide a framework within which the evolution of financial intermediation in rural economies can be understood.Rural Finance, Financial Intermediation, Agricultural Credit

Why do borrowers pledge collateral? new empirical evidence on the role of asymmetric information

An important theoretical literature motivates collateral as a mechanism that mitigates adverse selection, credit rationing, and other inefficiencies that arise when borrowers hold ex ante private information. There is no clear empirical evidence regarding the central implication of this literature—that a reduction in asymmetric information reduces the incidence of collateral. We exploit exogenous variation in lender information related to the adoption of an information technology that reduces ex ante private information, and compare collateral outcomes before and after adoption. Our results are consistent with this central implication of the private-information models and support the empirical importance of this theory.

Project Monitoring and Banking Competition under Adverse Selection

We develop an analysis of ex ante monitoring of risky projects in banking. If protected from competition, banks are more concerned about not catching good risk projects when the perceived state of the economy improves, while they are more concerned about being induced to finance bad risk projects when conditions deteriorate. A monopoly bank provides the socially optimal ex ante monitoring of good risks, but is too conservative with regard to bad risks. Competition between banks is shown to undermine the incentives to avoid decision errors regarding both good and bad risk projects providing too limited monitoring effort from society's point of view. ZUSAMMENFASSUNG - (Projektsteuerung und Bankenwettbewerb bei adverser Selektion) In dem Beitrag wird ein Modell zur Auswahl von risikobehafteten Projekten durch Banken entwickelt. Wenn Banken vor Wettbewerb geschützt werden, dann legen sie unter guten wirtschaftlichen Bedingungen mehr Wert darauf sich keine Projekte mit gutem Risiko entgehen zu lassen, wohingegen sie, wenn sich die Bedingungen verschlechtern eher darauf achten keine schlechten Projekte zu finanzieren. Eine monopolistische Bank leistet die sozial-optimale Auswahl guter Risiken, aber die Selektion ist zu konservativ im Hinblick auf schlechte Risiken. Es wird gezeigt, daß Wettbewerb zwischen den Banken dazu führt, daß die Anreize fehlerhafte Entscheidung zu vermeiden sowohl im Hinblick auf Projekte mit guten als auch für Projekte mit schlechten Risiken zu gering sind. Die gesellschaftliche Wohlfahrt sinkt, weil Banken zu wenig in Projektauswahl investieren.bank monitoring; adverse selection; banking competition; banking crisis

Why isn't there more Financial Intermediation in Developing Countries?

Financial intermediation, Mutual insurance , Safety nets , Microfinance , Microcredit

Are adverse selection models of debt robust to changes in market structure?

Many adverse selection models of standard one-period debt contracts are based on the following seemingly innocuous assumptions. First, entrepreneurs have private information about the quality of their return distributions. Second, return distributions are ordered by the monotone likelihood-ratio property. Third, financiers’ payoff functions are restricted to be monotonically non-decreasing in firm profits. Fourth, financial markets are competitive. We argue that debt is not an optimal contract in these models if there is only one (monopoly) financier rather than an infinite number of competitive financiers.security design; adverse selection; monotonic contracts; monotone likelihood ratio; first-order stochastic dominance