Should business bankruptcy be a one-chapter book?

Mitchell Berlin raises the question "Should Business Bankruptcy Be a One-Chapter Book?" The answer, in part, depends on the answers to other questions: What makes more economic sense? A bankruptcy system that auctions a firm's assets and distributes the proceeds among the creditors? Or one that allows the firm to seek to resume business after renegotiations between its stockholders and its creditors? Or is there room—or even a need—for both?Bankruptcy

Why don't banks take stock?

Banks in the United States are forbidden to hold stock in nonfinancial firms under most circumstances. The same is not true of banks in other countries. But are U.S. banks really shackled compared with their foreign counterparts? Do such restrictions make a difference in banks' behavior? Mitchell Berlin discusses these and other questions about banks' financial claims in nonfinancial firms and offers some possible answers.Bank stocks ; Stocks

For better and for worse: three lending relationships

Are close, long-term relationships between borrowers and lenders feasible in an increasingly competitive financial marketplace? How do relationships that have developed between banks and firms change when firms gain access to alternative funding sources, especially public securities markets? Can firms gain the best of both worlds by a judicious mixture of bank and public borrowing? Using three firms as examples, Mitchell Berlin sizes up the pros and cons of relationship lending.Bank loans

Bank credit standards

Banks' lending standards at times seem too stringent and at other times too lax. The pattern seems to indicate that banks lend more easily in good times but tighten credit standards in lean times. But such a lending pattern may also be attributable to changes in borrowers' default risk over the business cycle or changes in the demand for loans, which rises and falls with GDP. Is there a systematic reason why banks might be too lax or too stringent in their lending? Economists have proposed a number of models to explain a bank lending cycle, including changes in bank capital, competition, or herding behavior. In "Bank Credit Standards," Mitchell Berlin discusses these models and the empirical evidence for each.

"We control the vertical": three theories of the firm

The author discusses three broad approaches to vertical integration. He then uses each approach, in turn, to examine the pros and cons of a firm's decision to integrate forward.Business enterprises

Dancing with wolves: syndicated loans and the economics of multiple lenders

A firm’s passage from borrowing from a single lender to using multiple lenders is often viewed as an inevitable progression in the life of a firm. While there is a strong element of truth in this view, it is also incomplete. The underlying economics of moving from one lender to many involves more than simply asking whether the firm’s revenues are large enough to cover the costs of adding more lenders or of acquiring a public debt rating. The U.S. syndicated loan market provides a useful laboratory for exploring the economics of multiple lenders. In “Dancing with Wolves: Syndicated Loans and the Economics of Multiple Lenders,” Mitchell Berlin discusses recent research on the syndicated loan market that has attempted to answer questions related to firms’ use of multiple lenders.Loans

Debt maturity: What do economists say? What do CFOs say?

Mitchell Berlin discusses recent theories of how firms choose their debt maturity. Some of these theories are very useful for explaining how chief financial officers (CFOs) choose the maturity of their firms’ debt. However, CFOs seem to believe that they can predict future interest rates and time their borrowings accordingly, and this behavior fundamentally conflicts with most economic theories.Debt management

Summary of workshop on recent developments in consumer credit and payments

On September 24-25, 2009, the Research Department and the Payment Cards Center of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia held their fifth joint conference to present and discuss the latest research on consumer credit and payments. Sixty participants attended the conference, which included seven research papers on topics such as securitization and distressed loan renegotiation, consumer disclosure, data breaches and identity theft, and the effects of the U.S. financial crisis on global retail lending. In this article, Mitchell Berlin summarizes the papers presented at the conference.Mortgage loans ; Foreclosure ; Payday loans ; Identity theft ; Consumer protection ; Bank loans

Trade credit: why do production firms act as financial intermediaries?

Trade credit remains the single largest source of short-term business credit in the United States and other nations around the world. Why do production firms act as financial intermediaries - a role usually reserved for banks? In "Trade Credit: Why Do Production Firms Act as Financial Intermediaries?" Mitchell Berlin focuses on explanations that view trade credit as a method of monitoring and enforcing loan contracts to relatively risky firms. He also examines explanations in which a firm's long-term supply relationship helps it to make better credit decisions than a bank world.

That thing venture capitalist do

Although many people know the term venture capital, not many people know precisely what role venture capitalists play in the economy. How do they identify entrepreneurs with promising new ideas? What kinds of services do they provide to these entrepreneurs? Mitchell Berlin answers these and other questions as he describes "that thing venture capitalists do."Venture capital