Effects of Fiscal Instability on Financial Instability

This paper empirically examines how fiscal instability affects financial instability. According to an IMF forecast (2021a), the fiscal space in Korea will be steadily reduced in the future. The theoretical literature predicts that if fiscal stability is undermined, financial stability will also be in danger given that government guarantees on banks are weakened and/or sovereign bonds held in banks become riskier. This paper empirically finds the existence of this negative impact of fiscal instability on financial instability. I also find that the intensity of this fiscal-financial relationship is greater in a country where (i) its currency is not a reserve currency such as the US dollar or euro, (ii) its banking sector is large relative to government sector, and/or (iii) its private credit to GDP is high. Korea has all of these three characteristics and hence needs to put more effort into maintaining fiscal stability

Anti-competitiveness of Instant Messenger Tying by Microsoft

In this paper, we theoretically analyze Microsoft's tying practice in the instant messenger market. Using a model that highlights distinct features of the instant messenger, which are different from the cases of the web browser and the media player, we show that Microsoft can leverage its monopoly power in the operating system (OS) market to the instant messenger market through tying strategy. Microsoft's messenger tying hurts consumers because it enables Microsoft to monopolize messenger market and so fully exploit consumer's willingness to pay to the OS-messenger bundle. However, since tying saves installing costs, consumer loss is not so serious that total surplus improves under messenger tying. Finally we show that such results are robust to the possibilities of multi-homing in the instant messenger market.Microsoft, instant messenger, tying, foreclosure, multi-homing

A Signaling Theory of Education under the Presence of Career Concerns

A person’s life consists of two important stages: the first stage as a student and the second stage as a worker. In an integrated model of education and career concerns, I analyze the welfare effects of education. In Spence’s job market signaling model, education as a sorting device improves efficiency by mitigating the lemon market problem. In contrast, in the integrated model, education as a sorting device can be detrimental to social welfare, as it eliminates work incentives generated by career concerns

Three essays on contract theory and applications

textThis dissertation consists of three essays. The first essay examines a general theory of information based on informal contracting. The measurement problem—the disparity of true and measured performances—is at the core of many failures in incentive systems. Informal contracting can be a potential solution since, unlike in formal contracting, it can utilize a lot of qualitative and informative signals. However, informal contracting must be self-enforced. Given this trade-off between informativeness and self-enforcement, I show that a new source of statistical information is economically valuable in informal con- tracting if and only if it is sufficiently informative that it refines the existing pass/fail criterion. I also find that a new information is more likely valuable, as the stock of existing information is large. This information theory has implications on the measurement problem, a puzzle of relative performance evaluation and human resources management. I also provide a methodological contribution. For tractable analysis, the first-order approach (FOA) should be employed. Existing FOA-justifying conditions (e.g. the Mirrlees-Rogerson condition) are so strong that the information ranking condition can be applied only to a small set of information structures. Instead, I find a weak FOA- justifying condition, which holds in many prominent examples (with multi- variate normal or some of univariate exponential family distributions). The second essay analyzes the effectiveness of managerial punishments in mitigating moral hazard problem of government bailouts. Government bailouts of systemically important financial or industrial firms are necessary ex-post but cause moral hazard ex-ante. A seemingly perfect solution to this time-inconsistency problem is saving a firm while punishing its manager. I show that this idea does not necessarily work if ownership and management are separated. In this case, the shareholder(s) of the firm has to motivate the manager by using incentive contracts. Managerial punishments (such as Obama’s $500,000 bonus cap) could distort the incentive-contracting program. The shareholder’s ability to motivate the manager could then be reduced and thereby moral hazard could be exacerbated depending on corporate governance structures and punishment measures, which means the likelihood of future bailouts increases. As an alternative, I discuss the effectiveness of shareholder punishments. The third essay analyzes how education affect workers’ career-concerns. A person’s life consists of two important stages: the first stage as a student and the second stage as a worker. In order to address how a person chooses an education-career path, I examine an integrated model of education and career-concerns. In the first part, I analyze the welfare effect of education. In Spence’s job market signaling model, education as a sorting device improves efficiency by mitigating the lemon market problem. In my integrated model, by contrast, education as a sorting device can be detrimental to social welfare, as it eliminates the work incentive generated by career-concerns. In this regard, I suggest scholarship programs aimed at building human capital rather than sorting students. The second part provides a new perspective on education: education is job-risk hedging device (as well as human capital enhancing or sorting device). I show that highly risk-averse people take high education in order to hedge job-risk and pursue safe but medium-return work path. In contrast, lowly risk-averse people take low education, bear job-risk, and pursue high-risk high-return work path. This explains why some people finish college early and begin start-ups, whereas others take master’s or Ph.D. degrees and find safe but stable jobs.Economic

A theoretical analysis of public procurement for innovation

This paper provides a new theoretical rationale for public procurement for innovation (PPI), a unique policy encouraging public procurers to purchase innovative products. In contrast to existing studies that primarily emphasize the advantages of PPI, this paper takes a comprehensive approach, examining both the costs and risks associated with PPI, alongside its benefits. It finds a general condition under which PPI outperforms traditional public procurement. Under this condition, this paper demonstrates that PPI enhances social welfare by facilitating optimal risk-sharing between public procurers and the general economy. Additionally, it draws policy implications from a comparative analysis between the current PPI policy in Korea and an optimal PPI policy

An Unsuccessful Reform on the Local Public Contracts Law in Korea

In Korea, local governments and local agencies had to apply a version of the first price auction augmented by an ex-post screening process when they procure construction contracts. However, this first price auction had been criticized because it was felt that too much price competition could lead to poor ex-post performance in construction. In response, the existing auction method was recently replaced by a version of the average price auction with a similar screening process. This paper empirically examines the effectiveness of this reform and finds that the replacement only increases the fiscal burden of local governmental bodies without making any improvement in the ex-post performance

The sharing economy, welfare effects and policy implications

노트 : PP

Bail-in to end the “too big to fail” dilemma

Designed to resolve failed banks via loss-sharing by shareholders and creditors, bail-ins were introduced to substitute bailouts, which are known to create moral hazards in banks and a crisis in national finance. However, in cases wherein the majority of creditors are the general public, governments are still more inclined to bail out, despite the bail-in instruments being available. To increase the effectiveness of bail-ins, supplementary methods, such as depositor preference and contingent convertible bonds (CoCo bonds) with rule-based triggers, are needed. - Bailouts create moral hazards, and could lead to another banking crisis. - Bail-ins resolve failed banks by sharing the burden of loss between the shareholders and creditors. - Italy's recent banking crisis shows that bail-ins can be futile. - Deposits are applied to deposits, general bonds, CoCo bonds, etc. - CoCo bonds help banks meet the regulatory capital requirements without diluting shareholders' equity, and thus, issuance volume expands rapidly. - Governments are more likely to bail out when the majority of creditors are the general public. - When the market anticipates a bailout, the government will likely choose to bail out, and vice versa. - As for 'discretionary' CoCo bonds, the government directly determines the losssharing, hence the political buren is larger. - Due to the difference in political burden, 'discretionary' CoCo bonds tend to have a lower interest rate. - A regression analysis finds that 'discretionary' CoCo bonds have a 1.72%p lower average interest rate. - Adopting depositor preference would help increase the implementability of bailing in general creditors. - Strengthening qualifications of investors in general bonds and CoCo bonds could enhance the implementability of bail-ins. - Issuing 'rule-based' CoCo bonds could enhance the implementability of bail-ins

Impact of a policy rate cut on bank profitability and financial stability

Concerns prevail that a policy rate cut could weaken bank profitability and trigger financial instability. However, banks can sustain relatively high net interest margins with little fluctuation despite a rate cut owing to their dominant position in the deposit market and ability to adjust loan maturity. - By virtue of their market dominance, banks set their deposit rates below the base rate by a fixed percentage, and as such, the former falls within a narrower range than the latter. - Because deposit rates are little exposed to base rate fluctuations, banks are able to increase their share of long-term loans which are unaffected by short-term rate changes. This means that lending rates also fall by a smaller margin. - An empirical analysis found that a 1%p change in the call rate, which moves in line with the base rate, adjusts the deposit and lending rates by 0.53%p and 0.58%p, respectively, indicating that the fluctuation (0.05%p) in the net interest margin is statistically insignificant. Therefore, the possibility of financial instability due to a deterioration in bank profitability on a rate cut by the central bank should not be deemed as a constraint