Bank Lending with Imperfect Competition and Spillover Effects

We examine bank lending decisions in an economy with spillover effects in the creation of new investment opportunities and asymmetric information in credit markets. We examine pricesetting equilibria with horizontally differentiated banks. If bank lending takes place under a weak corporate governance mechanism and is fraught with agency problems and ineffective bank monitoring, then an equilibrium emerges in which loan supply is strategically restricted. In this equilibrium, the loan restriction, the “under-lending?strategy, provides an advantage to one bank by increasing its market share and sustaining monopoly interest rates. The bank’s incentives for doing so increase under conditions of increased volatility of lending capacities of banks, more severe borrower-side moral hazard, and lower returns on the investment projects. Although this equilibrium is not always unique, with poor bank monitoring and corporate governance, a more intense banking competition renders the bad equilibrium the unique outcome.Bank lending, threshold effects, underlending equilibria, interest rate competition.

Do institutions and culture matter for business cycles?

We examine the relationship between macroeconomic, institutional, and cultural indicators and cyclical fluctuations for European, Middle Eastern and North African Mediterranean countries. Mediterranean cycles are different from EU cycles: the duration of expansions is shorter; the amplitude and the output costs of recessions are larger; and cyclical synchronization is smaller. Differences in macroeconomic and institutional indicators partly account for the relative differences in cyclical synchronization. By contrast, differences in cultural indicators account for relative differences in the persistence, the volatility and the synchronization of cyclical fluctuations. Theoretical and policy implications are discussed

Business Cycles around the Globe: A Regime-switching Approach

This paper characterizes business cycle phenomena in a sample of 27 developed and developing economies using a univariate Markov regime switching approach. It examines the efficacy of this approach for detecting business cycle turning points and for identifying distinct economic regimes for each country in question. The paper also provides a comparison of the business cycle turning points implied by this study and those derived in other studies. Our findings document the importance of heterogeneity of individual countries’ experiences. We also argue that consideration of a large and diverse group of countries provides an alternative perspective on the co-movement of aggregate economic activity worldwide.business cycles; Markov switching approach; nonparametric modeling; turning point analysis

Bank Lending with Imperfect Competition and Spillover Effects

We examine bank lending decisions in an economy with spillover effects in the creation of new investment opportunities and asymmetric information in credit markets. We examine price-setting equilibria with horizontally differentiated banks. If bank lending takes place under a weak corporate governance mechanism and is fraught with agency problems and ineffective bank monitoring, then an equilibrium emerges in which loan supply is strategically restricted. In this equilibrium, the loan restriction, the "under-lending" strategy, provides an advantage to one bank by increasing its market share and sustaining monopoly interest rates. The bank's incentives for doing so increase under conditions of increased volatility of lending capacities of banks, more severe borrower-side moral hazard, and lower returns on the investment projects. Although this equilibrium is not always unique, with poor bank monitoring and corporate governance, a more intense banking competition renders the bad equilibrium the unique outcome.

Estimates of the Returns to Scale for US Manufacturing

This paper estimates the degree of the returns to scale for 2-digit U.S. manufacturing industries from the output-based primal and price-based dual equations implied by firms' cost-minimization problems. It seeks to reconcile the cyclical behavior of the primal and dual productivity residuals by allowing for nonconstant returns to scale and imperfect competition. We find significant differences between the estimates of the returns to scale parameter derived from the primal versus the dual equations. The existence of time-varying markups reduces the incidence of significant differences in the primal versus dual returns to scale estimates for the durable goods industries but not for the non-durable goods industries. Likewise, the presence of the quasi-fixity of capital helps to reconcile the behavior of the primal and dual productivity residuals for the durable but not for the non-durable goods industries.mark-ups; procyclical productivity; quasi-fixity of capital; Returns to Scale

Spillover Effects, Bank Lending and Growth

In this Paper, we examine bank lending decisions in an economy with spillover effects in the creation of new investment opportunities and asymmetric information in credit markets. We show that such features may lead to strategic considerations in the loan extension decision and in the pricing of loan contracts. We consider both lending and under-lending equilibria when the interest rate is exogenously given to banks. We show the existence of an asymmetric under-lending equilibrium in which productive investment projects do not get financed even if banks have adequate lending capacity. We also examine price-setting equilibria in which banks compete over interest rates charged to firms. We show that there exist price-setting equilibria in which all projects get financed if ex-post feasible. There also exists, however, an under-lending equilibrium in which when one bank does set a lower interest rate to capture a larger market, it may simultaneously reduce its lending. Our results suggest that volatility and unpredictability in bank lending capacities may be a key indicator of various adverse outcomes in our model.bank lending; interest rate competition; self-fulfilling beliefs; spillover effects; under-lending equilibria

Political Risk and Irreversible Investment

The objective of this article is two-fold. First, we develop a theoretical model to investigate the impact of political risk on irreversible investment. Second, we apply our model to an analysis of the effects of risk of separation of the province of Quebec from the Canadian federation. We model the probability of a regime switch using the properties of the electoral process and examine the response of investment to changes in the risk of separation. We consider the impact of investors' perception of the risk of separation and financial market volatility separately. We show that political risk has a depressing impact on investment even if the 'bad' regime has never been observed in the sample. (JEL Codes: E22, D92, O16, O11) Copyright , Oxford University Press.

The Sources of Long-term Economic Growth for Turkey, 1880-2005

This paper considers the sources of long-term economic growth for Turkey over the period 1880-2005. The period in question covers the decline and eventual dissolution of the former Ottoman Empire and the emergence of the new Turkish Republic in 1923. Hence, the paper provides a unique look at the growth experience of these two different political and economic regimes. The paper examines in detail the evolution of factors that led to growth in output across broad periods, including the post WWII period and the era or globalization beginning in the 1980's. It also considers output growth in the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors separately and allows for the effects of sectoral re-allocation. The lessons from this exercise have important implications for Turkey's future economic performance, for its ability to converge to per capita income levels of developed countries, and for the viability of its current bid for European Union membership.determinants of growth; growth accounting; sectoral re-allocation

Political Risk And Irreversible Investment: Theory And An Application To Quebec

Political risk is widely present in developing but also in developed countries, and stems from a variety of sources. The objective of this paper is twofold. First, we develop a theoretical model to investigate the impact of political risk on irreversible investment. Second, we apply our model to an analysis of the risk of separation of the province of Quebec from the Canadian federation. We consider the investment decisions of a monopolistically competitive firm under uncertainty about demand and about the tax-adjusted price of investment goods. We develop a model of irreversible investment which incorporates learning and a regime switch with time-varying transition probabilities. If a given regime represents a riskier environment in terms of the state of demand or the state of investment price, then attaching a positive probability to a switch to that regime increases the marginal adjustment cost of investing, reduces the expected marginal value of capital, and reduces irreversible investment. We use annual sectoral data for the Quebec economy for the period 1983-1996 to match the behaviour of actual investment with simulated series from our model.Canada; irreversible investment; Learning; Political Risk; Quebec Investment; Regime Shifts; Trends