Firm Heterogeneity, Internal Finance, and `Credit Rationing'

Assessing the extent to which agents or firms face capital-market imperfections and quantity restrictions on credit is crucial for measuring intertemporal tradeoffs in consumption or the cost of capital for investment. In contrast to standard price-clearing, "full-information" models of loan markets, in models of credit allocation where information is imperfect (which we describe as "information-intensive"). "the interest rate" need not reflect the shadow price of credit in financial intermediation. Credit rationing to some borrowers is likely. In actual markets, many loan contracts are offered, both "full-information" and "information intensive." Our focus in this paper is on firm heterogeneity in credit markets; we analyze mechanisms by which credit markets sort borrowers in the presence of differing degrees of asymmetric information; we emphasize the potential for credit rationing in equilibrium and the response of credit allocation to borrower-specific shocks. Our approach suggests that external finance will be differentially available to entrepreneurs --holding constant their project opportunities -- according to their internal net worth position. That is, there is an important link for many firms between internal finance and investment spending. We develop a simple general equilibrium model of credit allocation, in which different loan contracts are offered to different types of borrowers. The extent to which different borrowers can obtain credit depends on the distribution of internal finance, aggregate net worth levels, and whether projects are observable. While credit restrictions to some classes of borrowers are a feature of a multiple-contract equilibrium, the severity can vary substantially in response to financial disturbances. We consider shocks to borrowers' net worth. Credit restrictions may occur in response to a deterioration of net-worth positions., A "credit collapse," in which no loans are offered to certain types of borrowers is possible. Investment and financing decisions are not, in general independent. We discuss implications for tax policy and for public policy toward financial institutions.

International Adjustment Under the Classical Gold Standard: Evidence for the U.S. and Britain, 1879-1914

Links between disturbances in financial markets and those in real activity have long been the focus of studies of economic fluctuations during the period prior to World War I. We emphasize that domestic autonomy was substantially limited by internationally integrated markets for goods and capital. Such findings are important for studying business cycles during the period; for example, when prices are flexible, observed cyclical movements can be related to a credit-market transmission of deflationary shocks. Recent studies of the classical gold standard have revived interest in the process by which macroeconomic shocks were transmitted internationally during this period. The principal competing approaches - the "price-specie- flow," mechanism and the more modem "internationalist" view - differ according to the means by which international equilibrium is reestablished after a disturbance occurs in capital, money, or commodity markets. We present and interpret separate pieces of evidence on gold flows, interest rates, and selected commodity prices, all of which shed light on the alternative assumptions employed in the price-specie-flow and modern approaches. We employ a monthly data set for the U.S. and Britain for the pre-World War 1 frameworks. Using the "structural VAR" approach of Bernanke and Sims, we compare the actual historical importance of shocks and the observed patterns of short-run adjustment to shocks with the prediction of each of the two models. The evidence supports the "internationalist" view of close international linkages over the "specie-flow" view of circuitous linkages and domestic autonomy in money and capital markets.

Price Flexibility, Credit Rationing, and Economic Fluctuations: Evidence from the U.S., 1879-1914

The reawakening of interest in links between price flexibility and fluctuations in economic activity calls for a reconsideration of models of price and quantity adjustment. We examine relationships between credit disturbances and real activity under flexible prices, using monthly data on real and financial variables over the period from 1879-1914. Recent theoretical and empirical work has focused on models and institutions of the post World War II period. Historical episodes of pronounced business cycles, however, challenge our present formulations of the causes of fluctuations in output and employment. In this paper we pursue two goals: (i) to demonstrate that substantial price flexibility existed during the period to point out that models of economic fluctuations relying on sticky prices are not appropriate for analyzing the period, and (ii) to consider the effects of deflationary shocks on real variables in such a world. Our principal findings are two. First, we present evidence from several empirical tests to corroborate the stylized fact of price flexibility during our period of study (relative to patterns of flexibility observed in postwar data). Contrary to conclusions of many models applied to postwar data, we find that shocks to inflation rates produce positive and persistent effects on output.Second, extending earlier examinations of credit rationing as an outcome under imperfect information, we motivate this link by considering the impact of deflation on credit availability. The addition of measures of credit rationing accompanying deflation contributes substantially to our empirical explanation of output fluctuations during the period.

Internal Finance and Investment: Evidence from the Undistributed Profits Tax of 1936-1937

Recent theoretical approaches have linked shifts in firms' internal funds and investment spending, holding constant underlying investment opportunities. An important impediment to convincing tests of these models is the lack of firm-level data on the relative costs of internal and external funds. We use a tax experiment, the Surtax on Undistributed Profits (SUP) in the 1930s, to identify firms' relative cost of internal and external funds and analyze its effect on firms' investment decisions. Finns' responses to the surtax on retained earnings permit estimation of shadow price differentials between internal and external finance, and measurement of the link between access to capital markets and investment. Almost one-fourth of the 273 publicly-traded manufacturing firms in our sample retained in excess of 40 percent of their earnings in spite of the surtax, paying the highest marginal rates of surtax. The investment spending of these firms was sensitive to shifts in cash flow, holding constant investment opportunities (measured by the ratio of market-to-book value). No sensitivity of investment to internal funds could be detected for firms with higher dividend payout and lower surtax liability. In addition, many firms with high marginal rates of surtax were in the growth industries of the day. The sensitivity of investment spending to internal funds for firms with high marginal surtax rates appears mainly to reflect information-related capital-market frictions as opposed to the waste of corporate cash flows by entrenched managers.

The Farm Debt Crisis and Public Policy

macroeconomics, farm debt crisis, agricultural banking

AN ENTERPRISE COMPETITION ANALYSIS OF BEEF PRODUCTION IN THE SOUTH

Livestock Production/Industries,

Internal Finance and Investment: Evidence from the Undistributed Profits Tax of 1936-37

Theoretical work on financing costs under asymmetric information has linked shifts in firms' internal funds and investment spending, holding constant investment opportunities. An impediment to convincing tests of these models is the lack of firm-level data on the relative cost of internal and external funds. We use a tax experiment, the surtax on undistributed profits in the 1930s, to identify firms' relative cost of internal and external funds by calculating surtax margins. The investment of high-surtax-margin firms was sensitive to shifts in cash flow, holding constant investment opportunities. Other firms did not display sensitivity of investment to internal funds

Assessment of the GW Approximation using Hubbard Chains

We investigate the performance of the GW approximation by comparison to exact results for small model systems. The role of the chemical potentials in Dyson's equation as well as the consequences of numerical resonance broadening are examined, and we show how a proper treatment can improve computational implementations of many-body perturbation theory in general. GW and exchange-only calculations are performed over a wide range of fractional band fillings and correlation strengths. We thus identify the physical situations where these schemes are applicable

An experimental study of the temporal statistics of radio signals scattered by rain

A fixed-beam bistatic CW experiment designed to measure the temporal statistics of the volume reflectivity produced by hydrometeors at several selected altitudes, scattering angles, and at two frequencies (3.6 and 7.8 GHz) is described. Surface rain gauge data, local meteorological data, surveillance S-band radar, and great-circle path propagation measurements were also made to describe the general weather and propagation conditions and to distinguish precipitation scatter signals from those caused by ducting and other nonhydrometeor scatter mechanisms. The data analysis procedures were designed to provide an assessment of a one-year sample of data with a time resolution of one minute. The cumulative distributions of the bistatic signals for all of the rainy minutes during this period are presented for the several path geometries

Tone-activated, remote, alert communication system

Pocket sized transmitter, frequency modulated by crystal derived tones, with integral loop antenna provides police with easy operating alert signal communicator which uses patrol car radio to relay signal. Communication channels are time shared by several patrol units