Banking Relations, Competition and Research Incentives

When banks incur sunk costs to provide ex-ante information about customers, exclusive banking relations will occur under intense price competition when monitoring costs are low. When monitoring costs are sufficiently high, only non-monitored finance will be provided, typically, by multiple lenders. While multiple lending generally is (second-best) efficient when it emerges, relationship lending typically is not. In our framework, the informational rents in relationships of a single financier (house bank) typically exceed the risk premium required for financing projects from the unscreened pool of applicants. Accordingly, when entrepreneurs can affect repayment probabilities by sunk ex-ante investments prior to the financing stage, in a house bank regime investment incentives are typically lower than under conditions of competitive non-monitored lending.relationship banking, multiple lending, monitoring, research incentives

Stock price informativeness, cross-listings and investment decisions

In this paper, the authors show that a cross-listing allows a firm to make better investment decisions because it enhances stock price informativeness.Cross-listings; cross-listings premium; price informativeness; investment decisions; flow-back; ownership.

Information Sharing in Banking: A Collusive Device?

We show that information sharing among banks may serve as a collusive device. An informational sharing agreement is an a-priori commitment to reduce informational asymmetry between banks in future lending. Hence, information sharing agreements tend to increase the intensity of competition in future periods and, thus, reduce the value of informational rents in current competition. We contribute to the existing literature by emphasizing that a reduction in informational rents will also reduce the intensity of competition in the current period, thereby reducing competitive pressure in current credit markets. We provide a large class of economic environments, where a ban on information sharing is strictly preferred by society.

Two at the Top: Quality Differentiation in Markets with Switching Costs

We explore the effects of switching costs on the subgame perfect quality decisions of oligopolists with repeated price competition. We establish a strong strategic quality premium. We show that competition for the establishment of customer relationships will eliminate low-quality firms in period 1 and that low-quality firms can survive only based on poaching profits. The equilibrium configuration is characterized by an agglomeration of two providers of top-quality as soon as switching cost heterogeneity is sufficiently significant. We demonstrate a finiteness property, according to which the two top-quality firms dominate the market with a joint market share exceeding 50 %.quality choice; switching costs; poaching; natural oligopoly

Venture Cycles: Theory and Evidence

We demonstrate how endogenous information acquisition in venture capital markets creates investment cycles when competing financiers undertake their screening decisions in an uncoordinated way, thereby highlighting the role of intertemporal screening externalities induced by competition among venture capitalists as a structural source of instability. We show that uncoordinated screening behavior of competing financiers is an independent source of fluctuations inducing venture investment cycles. We also empirically document the existence of cyclical features in a number of industries such as biotechnology, electronics, financial services, healthcare, medical services and consumer products.screening, venture capital, investment cycles

Liquidity and Competition in Unregulated Markets

Despite reputedly widespread market manipulation and insider trading, we find surprisingly high liquidity and low transactions costs for actively traded securities on the NYSE between 1890 and 1910, decades before SEC regulation. Moreover, market makers behave largely as predicted in theory: stocks with liquid markets and competitive market makers (cross-trading at the rival Consolidated Exchange) trade with substantially lower quoted bid-ask spreads and with less anti-competitive behavior (price discreteness). Effective spreads, illiquidity, and volume all improve monotonically over time. Notably, the asymmetric information component of effective spreads increases in relative and absolute terms from 1900 to 1910.

Speculative and precautionary demand for liquidity in competitive banking markets

We demonstrate that the co-existence of different motives for liquidity preferences profoundly affects the efficiency of financial intermediation. Liquidity preferences arise because consumers wish to take precautions against sudden and unforeseen expenditure needs, and because investors want to speculate on future investment opportunities. Without further frictions, the co-existence of these motives enables banks to gain efficiencies from combining liquidity insurance and credit intermediation. With standard financial frictions, banks cannot reap such economies of scope. Indeed, the co-existence of a precautionary and a speculative motive can cause efficiency losses which would not occur if there were only a single motive. Specifically, if the arrival of profitable future investment opportunities is sufficiently likely, such co-existence implies inefficient separation, pooling, or even non-existence of pure strategy equilibria. This suggests that policy implications derived solely from a single motive for liquidity demand can be futile