A Darker Side to Decentralized Banks: Market Power and Credit Rationing in SME Lending

We use loan-level data to study how the organizational structure of banks impacts small business lending. We find that decentralized banks ? where branch managers have greater autonomy over lending decisions ? give larger loans to small firms and those with "soft information". However, decentralized banks are also more responsive to their own competitive environment. They are more likely to expand credit when faced with competition but also cherry pick customers and restrict credit when they have market power. This "darker side" to decentralized banks in concentrated markets highlights that the level of local banking competition is key to determining which organizational structure provides better lending terms for small businesses.banking, bank structure, soft information, small business lending

Large Scale Parallel Computations in R through Elemental

Even though in recent years the scale of statistical analysis problems has increased tremendously, many statistical software tools are still limited to single-node computations. However, statistical analyses are largely based on dense linear algebra operations, which have been deeply studied, optimized and parallelized in the high-performance-computing community. To make high-performance distributed computations available for statistical analysis, and thus enable large scale statistical computations, we introduce RElem, an open source package that integrates the distributed dense linear algebra library Elemental into R. While on the one hand, RElem provides direct wrappers of Elemental's routines, on the other hand, it overloads various operators and functions to provide an entirely native R experience for distributed computations. We showcase how simple it is to port existing R programs to Relem and demonstrate that Relem indeed allows to scale beyond the single-node limitation of R with the full performance of Elemental without any overhead.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figure

Evidence in practice: how structural and programmatic scaffolds enable knowledge transfer in international development

This inductive study of eight international development interventions across four countries analyzes the mechanisms that enable effective integration of evidence in practice, as an enduring challenge of learning and coordination across occupational and organizational boundaries. We identify how a set of critical, complementary structural and programmatic scaffolding practices, jointly provided a shared architecture for actors across organizations and communities of practice to collaborate and learn within the uncertainty and complexity inherent in the international development context. Scaffolding practices offered modular, temporary counter-balancing stabilizing and extending support that enabled the unusual and counter normative behaviors and mindsets required for continuous learning and adaptive coordination. Through 226 in-depth interviews with a range of international development experts, including practitioners engaged in eight matched interventions in India, Mexico, South Africa, and Ghana,we identified and analyzed the mechanisms that explain the varying degrees of effectiveness with which rigorous evidence was integrated in each case. Our findings have implications for interorganizational innovation and collaboration under conditions of complexity and uncertainty, as well as the dynamic interactions between individuals, their organizations, and their communities of practice when attempting to bring about systemic change.William and Flora Hewlett FoundationAccepted manuscrip

The stranger as friend: loan officers and positive deviance in microfinance

This chapter explores positive deviance in the context of microfinance. Some loan officers frequently bend or choose not to enforce written rules in an effort to better address client needs, while others enforce the rules strictly. These differences in enforcement styles are analyzed to explore the structural characteristics that generate and sustain rule-bending behavior. In microfinance, the pressures to standardize and automate lending decisions challenge loan officers’ ability to manage clients because context uncertainty cannot be fully captured by centralized policies. The chapter explores the structural conditions that lead to positive deviance with productive outcomes by the organization’s own criteria. The paper unveils two inherent tensions in microfinance. First, increased efforts to centralize and enforce policies in fact only increase the pressures for loan officers to work outside the organizations’ regulations. Second, this type of positive deviance keeps the organizations connected to their core, social missions.Accepted manuscrip

Institutional entrepreneurship in Mexican small business finance

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2008."June 2008."Includes bibliographical references.Through a combination of in-depth research and unique loan-level data, this dissertation explores the mechanisms of intentional institutional change. It argues that current accounts of institutions and institutional change require but do not provide a systematic understanding of the role of individuals in processes of change. It then uses two in-depth case studies to explore the mechanisms through which individuals can initiate institutional change. One case is the activation of the small business credit market in Mexico. The second is the expansion of micro credit in the country. Through these cases, the dissertation proposes that, contrary to conventional thinking, institutional change is not rare because institutional entrepreneurs are scarce. In fact, they are quite prevalent. Rather, what is scarce is the required combination of an opportunity for change, individuals who can recognize this opportunity, have the capabilities and skills to pursue it, and are situated in the right structural position to drive a change process. It further argues that successful institutional entrepreneurs are usually situated in positions of middle management, which provide the right balance between a motivation to experiment, access to sufficient resources, and discretion to diverge from norms. Additionally, institutional entrepreneurs tend to have mixed backgrounds with diverse professional trajectories, which allow them to detect opportunities, cross borders, and learn the different languages required to brokerage experimental efforts.by Rodrigo Canales.Ph.D

When Salespeople Manage Customer Relationships: Multidimensional Incentives and Private Information

At many firms, incentivized salespeople with private information about customers are responsible for CRM. While incentives motivate sales performance, private information can induce moral hazard by salespeople to gain compensation at the expense of the firm. We investigate the sales performance–moral hazard tradeoff in response to multidimensional performance (acquisition and maintenance) incentives in the presence of private information. Using unique panel data on customer loan acquisition and repayments linked to salespeople from a microfinance bank, we detect evidence of salesperson private information. Acquisition incentives induce salesperson moral hazard leading to adverse customer selection, but maintenance incentives moderate it as salespeople recognize the negative effects of acquiring low-quality customers on future payoffs. Critically, without the moderating effect of maintenance incentives, adverse selection effect of acquisition incentives overwhelms the sales enhancing effects, clarifying the importance of multidimensional incentives for CRM. Reducing private information (through job transfers) hurts customer maintenance, but has greater impact on productivity by moderating adverse selection at acquisition. The paper also contributes to the recent literature on detecting and disentangling customer adverse selection and customer moral hazard (defaults) with a new identification strategy that exploits the time-varying effects of salesperson incentives

Multidimensional Sales Incentives in CRM Settings: Customer Adverse Selection and Moral Hazard

In many firms, incentivized salespeople with private information about their customers are responsible for customer relationship management (CRM). Private information can help the firm by increasing sales efficiency, but it can also hurt the firm if salespeople use it to maximize own compensation at the expense of the firm. Specifically, we consider two negative outcomes due to private information — ex-ante customer adverse selection at the time of acquisition and ex-post customer moral hazard after acquisition. This paper investigates potential positive and negative responses of a salesforce to managerial levers — multidimensional incentives for acquisition and retention performance and job transfers that affect the level of private information. Salespeople are responsible for managing customer relationships and compensated through multidimensional performance incentives for customer acquisition and maintenance at many firms. This paper investigates how a salesperson’s private information on customers affect their response to multiple dimensions of incentives. Using unique matched panel data that links individual salesperson performance metrics with customer level loans and repayments from a microfinance bank, we find that sales people indeed possess private information that is not available to the firm. Salespeople use the private information to engage in adverse selection of customers in response to acquisition incentives. Customer maintenance incentives serve a dual purpose; they not only reduce loan defaults, but also moderate adverse selection in customer acquisition. Transfers that eliminate private information reduces the adverse selection effects of acquisition incentives, but increase loan defaults — customer moral hazard. Despite the potential negative adverse selection effects due to private information, the effort increasing effect of each of the three dimensions of sales management we investigate — acquisition incentive, maintenance incentive and transfers all have a net positive effect on firm value. Methodologically, the paper introduces an identification strategy to separate customer adverse selection and customer moral hazard (loan repayment), by leveraging the multidimensional incentives of an intermediary (salesperson) responsible for both customer selection and repayment with private information about customers

Estudio de prevalencia de quistes hidatidícos en pacientes con resección quirúrgica del hospital regional de Talca

88 p.El estudio de los quistes hidatídicos cada vez, está llamando más la atención, puesto que el aumento de casos diagnosticados se ha acrecentado en los últimos años. La Hidatidosis es una zoonosis parasitaria de alta endemicidad en algunos países especialmente en algunos de América del Sur, sobre todo en Argentina, Chile, Uruguay y Brasil. Esta enfermedad está provocada por la ingesta causal de huevos de Echinococcus granulosus que, a menudo, pueden contaminar alimentos. Puede afectar a animales, tanto salvajes como domésticos, e incluso al ser humano. La Hidatidosis humana prevalece en el hígado, le sigue en frecuencia el pulmón, las otras localizaciones comunes son el peritoneo, bazo, riñón, huesos, corazón, piel y músculos. Se abordará aspectos epidemiológicos de la Hidatidosis tanto en América del Sur. Resaltando la situación de esta parasitosis en Chile, evaluando puntos tales como la prevalencia a través de los años, y así mismo las regiones con mayor endemicidad. En la Región del Maule se ha mantenido la prevalencia de esta parasitosis, por su característica de Región agrícola y ganadera, estos quistes hidatídicos se alojan en distintos órganos del ser humano. Por ende se realizó un estudio para determinar cuál es la situación actual de casos, y los órganos más prevalentes en la Provincia de Talca. Para ello se recogieron antecedentes de pacientes registrados en la Unidad de Anatomía Patológica del Hospital Regional de Talca, y se realizó un análisis de la base de datos comprendido entre los años 2000 y 2010. Al analizar los datos obtenidos, se puede concluir que la Hidatidosis en la Provincia de Talca sigue tan prevalente, como hace 10 años atrás, registrándose que el órgano más común infectado tanto para el hombre como para la mujer sigue siendo el hígado, además existe una alta prevalencia de quistes localizados en la zona del sistema reproductor femenino

Humedales flotantes de tratamiento (FTW) como método de remediación en diversos tipos de aguas residuales: Revisión sistemática

El presente trabajo tuvo como objetivo determinar cuáles son los puntos más relevantes de la aplicación de humedales flotantes de tratamiento como método de remediación en diversos tipos de aguas residuales; para lo cual se aplicó un tipo de estudio aplicada, de diseño narrativo de tópico. Mediante los resultados se obtuvo que, los tipos de aguas residuales más usadas son las aguas residuales industriales y pluviales; siendo entre las aguas industriales las que presentan mayor contaminación las industrias acuícolas, lácteas, grises sintéticos, drenaje ácido de la mina, con gasóleo diésel, industria textil. El porcentaje de remoción de las aguas residuales es alto presentando como promedio un porcentaje de 80% a más en contaminantes como TP, TN, TP, BOD, COD, metales pesados, hidrocarburos. Además, también se identificó que la mayor remoción se generaba con la adición de bacterias inoculadas. Por último, los tipos de vegetación de los humedales flotantes son de tipo macrofitas, siendo este la clase de vegetación que es más utilizadas para la remediación de aguas residuales, en especial para eliminar el nitrato de las aguas contaminadas. Siendo las macrofitas más empleadas Phragmites australis, Spartina patens y Eichhornia Crassipe

A darker side to decentralized banks: market power and credit rationing in SME lending

We use loan-level data to study how the organizational structure of banks impacts small business lending. We find that decentralized banks — where branch managers have greater autonomy over lending decisions — give larger loans to small firms and those with "soft information". However, decentralized banks are also more responsive to their own competitive environment. They are more likely to expand credit when faced with competition but also cherry pick customers and restrict credit when they have market power. This "darker side" to decentralized banks in concentrated markets highlights that the level of local banking competition is key to determining which organizational structure provides better lending terms for small businesses.First author draf