Committee Decisions under Alternative Procedural Rules: An Experimental Study Applying a New Nonmonetary Method of Preference Inducement

Committees operating with simple majority rule procedures and with closed rule procedures are studied. A new method (the duplicate method) was used to induce preferences. The results of the control experiments compare favorably to those for which monetary incentives have been used. In all cases the core is a relatively accurate model of committee choices

Bank Privatization in Hungary and the Magyar Kulkereskedelmi Bank Transaction

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39395/3/wp3.pd

The Czech Republic's Commercial Bank: Komercni Banka

Important elements of the transactional structure that created and partially privatized Komercni Banka, the Czech Republic's largest commercial bank, include antecedent actions that determined the bank's management and established its commercial loan portfolio, a decision against splitting the bank's operations into smaller organizational units, the reliance on voucher privatization, and limited post-privatization financial support. The main feature, however, is the government's decision to retain control and majority ownership of Komer6nf. Our analysis of the bank's subsequent credit allocations yields evidence of the government's preference for a deliberate rather than a quick move toward market-driven decision-making. The opportunity to privatize a strong bank and harden enterprise-level budget constraints quickly was foregone, or at least postponed, in favor of creating a protected bank that would deal more leniently with Komercni's politically-vested commercial clients.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39398/3/wp6.pd

BUDGET DEFICITS, CURRENT ACCOUNT DEFICITS AND INTEREST RATES: THE SYSTEMATIC EVIDENCE ON RICARDIAN EQUIVALENCE

The recent reemergence of large U.S. government budget deficits has rekindled the debate as to whether deficits adversely impact real interest rates. The conventional “crowding out” hypothesis predicts that there would be such an adverse effect; the Ricardian “deficit neutrality” hypotheses predict no adverse impact. However, in a fully open economy, budget deficits affect the economy through the current account rather than the interest rate channel. Under the conventional view, current account deficits react one-for-one to budget deficits; under the Ricardian view, neither real interest rates nor current account deficits would react. In this paper, we examine the systematic evidence on the impact of budget deficits on both real interest rates and current account deficits. We test the conventional “crowding out” hypotheses against the Ricardian “deficit neutrality” alternative. Because our tests are structured on both interest rates and current account deficits, they have validity regardless of the extent of the openness of the U.S. economy over the time period of the analysis. We structure a series of tests that explore the impacts of both current and expected future budget deficits on (1) both interest rates and current account deficits; (2) across a variety of specification issues including data non-stationarity, lag structure, auxiliary variables, term structure, and functional form; and (3) over the period 1976 through 2002 which contains spectacular “natural experiment” variation in the data that should allow any links between budget deficits and interest rates or current account deficits to be easily detected. Our results are systematic and dramatic. Over the full structure of the specification space, there is no evidence of any positive effects of either current or expected future budget deficits on either real interest rates or current account deficits. Because of the large variation in the data generated by the natural experiment, economically significant effects can be clearly rejected. Moreover, when viewed over the full structure of the specification space, there appears to be a relatively significant and systematic negative effect of budget deficits on current account deficits (and sometimes but not systematically on interest rates). This latter effect is consistent with augmentations to an underlying Ricardian framework based on either uncertainty effects or intertemporal deadweight loss effects.Ricardian Equivalence Kormendi Roger Protopapadakis Budget deficits Interest rates Seater crowding out barrox

Committee Decisions under Alternative Procedural Rules: An Experimental Study Applying a New Nonmonetary Method of Preference Inducement

Committees operating with simple majority rule procedures and with closed rule procedures are studied. A new method (the duplicate method) was used to induce preferences. The results of the control experiments compare favorably to those for which monetary incentives have been used. In all cases the core is a relatively accurate model of committee choices

Band Privatization in Transition Economies

This paper offers a unified framework for assessing bank privatization that is based on the principles of modern economics, finance, accounting and banking, the validity of which is supported by extensive experience. This framework serves as a foundation for analyzing the cases. It accommodates the central reality that "each case is different" and that progress in bank privatization will be on a case-by-case basis, yet also develops common principles that bear on successful bank privatization. Thus, the framework allows analysts and policy makers to decompose any given bank privatization into case-specific fasctors and the general factors. The case-specific factors are those that are unique to the specific bank in question and that provide the context for applying the unified framework. The general factors are those issues and considerations that can be applied in a unified framework based on modern scientific finance and economics to virtually any case.

The Czech Republic's Commercial Bank: Komercni Banka

Important elements of the transactional structure that created and partially privatized Komercni Banka, the Czech Republic's largest commercial bank, include antecedent actions that determined the bank's management and established its commercial loan portfolio, a decision against splitting the bank's operations into smaller organizational units, the reliance on voucher privatization, and limited post-privatization financial support. The main feature, however, is the government's decision to retain control and majority ownership of Komer6nf. Our analysis of the bank's subsequent credit allocations yields evidence of the government's preference for a deliberate rather than a quick move toward market-driven decision-making. The opportunity to privatize a strong bank and harden enterprise-level budget constraints quickly was foregone, or at least postponed, in favor of creating a protected bank that would deal more leniently with Komercni's politically-vested commercial clients.