Heterogeneous multiple bank financing under uncertainty: does it reduce inefficient credit decisions?

Small and medium-sized firms typically obtain capital via bank financing. They often rely on a mixture of relationship and arm’s-length banking. This paper explores the reasons for the dominance of heterogeneous multiple banking systems. We show that the incidence of inefficient credit termination and subsequent firm liquidation is contingent on the borrower’s quality and on the relationship bank’s information precision. Generally, heterogeneous multiple banking leads to fewer inefficient credit decisions than monopoly relationship lending or homogeneous multiple banking, provided that the relationship bank’s fraction of total firm debt is not too large

The Role of Information Disparity in the 1994/95 Mexican Peso

In the Mexican Peso crisis 1994/95, the lack of readily available information, particularly regarding monetary aggregates, has often been commented on. This paper analyzes empirically whether information disparity with respect to economic fundamentals contributed to the crisis. Using historical forecast data collected by Consensus Economics, we show that uncertainties, as measured by the forecast variation, significantly influenced the pressure on the fixed Peso rate. This effect is additional to the one that actual and expected fundamentals had on the exchange rate pressure. Furthermore, the impact of information disparity is found to be contingent on the market expectation about fundamentals. It seems that the central bank's strategy of not publicly disclosing information was detrimental for the very reason that the market sentiment was generally optimistic with regard to the monetary development.Currency Crisis, Speculative Attack, Private and Public Information, Transparency

Privacy or publicity - who drives the wheel?

Financial markets are to a very large extent influenced by the advent of information. Such disclosures, however, do not only contain information about fundamentals underlying the markets, but they also serve as a focal point for the beliefs of market participants. This dual role of information gains further importance for explaining the development of asset valuations when taking into account that information may be perceived individually (private information), or may be commonly shared by all traders (public information). This study investigates into the recently developed theoretical structures explaining the operating mechanism of the two types of information and emphasizes the empirical testability and differentiation between the role of private and public information. Concluding from a survey of experimental studies and own econometric analyses, it is argued that most often public information dominates private information. This finding justifies central bankers´ unease when disseminating news to the markets and argues against the recent trend of demanding full transparency both for financial institutions and financial markets themselves

Heterogeneous multiple bank financing, optimal business risk and information disclosure

Small and medium-sized firms typically obtain capital via bank financing. They often rely on a mixture of relationship and arm’s-length banking. This paper explores the reasons for the dominance of heterogeneous multiple banking systems. We show that the incidence of inefficient credit termination and subsequent firm liquidation is contingent on the borrower’s quality and on the relationship bank’s information precision. Generally, heterogeneous multiple banking leads to fewer inefficient credit decisions than monopoly relationship lending or homogeneous multiple banking, provided that the relationship bank’s fraction of total firm debt is not too large

Privacy or Publicity - Who Drives the Wheel?

Financial markets are to a very large extent influenced by the advent of information. Such disclosures, however, do not only contain information about fundamentals underlying the markets, but they also serve as a focal point for the beliefs of market participants. This dual role of information gains further importance for explaining the development of asset valuations when taking into account that information may be perceived individually (private information), or may be commonly shared by all traders (public information). This study investigates into the recently developed theoretical structures explaining the operating mechanism of the two types of information and emphasizes the empirical testability and differentiation between the role of private and public information. Concluding from a survey of experimental studies and own econometric analyses, it is argued that most often public information dominates private information. This finding justifies central bankers’ unease when disseminating news to the markets and argues against the recent trend of demanding full transparency both for financial institutions and financial markets themselves.Private information, public information, transparency, beliefs, coordination, financial crises

Heterogeneous multiple bank financing: does it reduce inefficient credit-renegotation incidences?

Small and medium-sized firms often obtain capital via a mixture of relationship and arm's-length bank lending. We show that such heterogeneous multiple bank financing leads to a lower probability of ineefficient credit foreclosure than both monopoly relationship lending and homogeneous multiple bank financing. Yet, in order to reduce hold-up and coordination-failure risk, the relationship bank's fraction of total firm debt must not become too large. For firms with intermediate expected profits, the probability of ineefficient credit-renegotiation is shown to decrease along with the relationship bank's information precision. For firms with extremely high or extremely low expected returns, however, it increases. --Relationship lending,asymmetric information,financial distress,hold-up,coordination failure

Private and Public Information in Self-Fulfilling Currency Crises

This paper analyses the implications of information dissemination on currency crises in models with self-fulfilling expectations. Following Morris/Shin (1999, 2000), we introduce noisy private and public information, so that under certain conditions for the noise parameters a unique equilibrium is derived. Comparative statics then show that if the fundamental state of the economy is good, the probability of a currency crisis decreases in the precision of public information, but increases in the precision of private information. In case of bad fundamentals, however, more precise public information increases the likelihood of a crisis, whereas more precise private information leads to a lower crisis probability.currency crises, self-fulfilling expectations, private and public information, multiple equilibria

The economics of rating watchlists: evidence from rating changes

Generally, information provision and certification have been identified as the major economic functions of rating agencies. This paper analyzes whether the “watchlist" (rating review) instrument has extended the agencies' role towards a monitoring position, as proposed by Boot, Milbourn, and Schmeits (2006). Using a data set of Moody's rating history between 1982 and 2004, we find that the overall information content of rating action has indeed increased since the introduction of the watchlist procedure. Our findings suggest that rating reviews help to establish implicit monitoring contracts between agencies and borrowers and as such enable a finer partition of rating information, thereby contributing to a higher information quality