Strategic risk aversion

This article demonstrates that exaggerated risk aversion may comprise a rational form of strategic behaviour in the face of asymmetric information. Unlike some other forms of strategic behaviour analysed previously, this behaviour confers a benefit in the form of higher ex post consumption (not merely higher expected consumption or expected utility) and whether or not markets are perfectly competitive

Network diseconomies and optimal structure

This paper explores the effect on costs when firms within an industry must interact with each other in the normal course of business. Such interaction will generally cause the socially optimal scale of each firm to deviate from its minimum average cost scale. In addition, the socially optimal industry structure may be more concentrated than conventional firm-level cost studies would suggest and may also differ from the unregulated (free-entry) equilibrium structure. These concepts, while potentially applicable to several industries, are here made more precise for the banking industry, both theoretically and empirically.Bank mergers ; Economies of scale ; Theory of the firm

New small firms and dimensions of economic performance

Using data from US labour market areas, we quantify empirical associations between entry by small firms and a vector of economic performance measures encompassing levels, volatilities and growth rates of several income and employment variables. Distinct and robust associations are found for net and gross rates of entry. These results suggest a richer variety of effects of entry than previously documented, and point to several potential tradeoffs associated with entry by small firms.growth; stability; employment; entry

Assessing Competition with the Panzar-Rosse Model: The Role of Scale, Costs, and Equilibrium

The Panzar-Rosse test has been widely applied to assess competitive conduct, often in specifcations controlling for firm scale or using a price equation. We show that neither a price equation nor a scaled revenue function yields a valid measure for competitive conduct. Moreover, even an unscaled revenue function generally requires additional information about costs and market equilibrium. Our theoretical findings are confirmed by an empirical analysis of competition in banking, using a sample covering more than 110,000 bank-year observations on almost 18,000 banks in 67 countries during 1986-2004.Panzar-Rosse test, competition, firm size

Bank Loans to Newly Public Firms

Prior studies have shown that newly public firms exhibit a high degree of uncertainty and asymmetric information, with few reliable sources of information. These findings suggest that investors could benefit if some independent party is able to assess the quality of a newly public firm. Since other studies have found that banks can reduce information asymmetry about firms that borrow, we examine whether banks provide information about the quality of newly public firms. We find that bank lending is consistently associated with positive long-term outcomes-newly public firms that borrow experience significantly smaller decreases in operating performance and better long-term stock performance than non-borrowers

Measuring multi-product banks' market power using the Lerner index

The aggregate Lerner index is a popular composite measure of multi-product banks’ market power, based on total assets as the single aggregate output factor. We show that the aggregate Lerner index only qualifies as a consistently aggregated Lerner index if three conditions hold. Under these conditions, the aggregate Lerner index reduces to a weighted-average of the product-specific Lerner indices. We test the three conditions for a sample of U.S. banks covering the years 2011–2017. All three conditions are rejected and we show that they may cause an economically relevant bias to the aggregate Lerner index, depending on the economic context. As a general solution, we propose using the always consistently aggregated weighted-average Lerner index whenever a composite Lerner index is needed

Credit union policies and performance in Latin America

This paper explores empirical linkages between credit unions' (CUs') policies and their financial performance, as measured by loan delinquency and profitability, using a unique micro dataset of credit unions in three Latin American countries. The estimated translog profit function is generalized using a slack variable concept that parameterizes any systematic deviation from profit- maximizing behavior exhibited within the sample. In general, we find that performance depends in important ways on two types of CU policy variables, some associated with the incentives of borrowers to repay and others that affect the CU's ability to screen loans.Credit unions ; Latin America

Interest rate risk: what's a bank to do?

Interest rates ; Asset-backed financing

Capital requirements and rational discount window borrowing

When banks face capital regulations and stochastic deposit supply, their decisions to borrow at the discount window will be affected by a broader range of variables than previous theoretical and empirical studies have recognized. Moreover, those decisions can respond discontinuously to changes in market parameters and to the form of rationing rule by which the discount window is administered. Risk aversion can complicate these linkages considerably, even causing some banks to prefer a positive discount rate that may exceed the actual level.Bank capital ; Discount window

Challenges to small banks' survival

Bank failures ; Bank assets ; Banks and banking - Costs