Equilibrium in financial markets with adverse selection

We study a financial market adverse selection model where all agents are endowed with initial wealth and choose to invest as entrepreneurs or financiers, or not to invest. We show that often a lack of outside finance leads to the emergence of financial markets where availability of outside finance leads to autarky. We find that i) there exist Pareto- efficient and inefficient equilibria; ii) adverse selection has more severe consequences for poorer economies; iii) increasing initial wealth may cause a shift from Pareto-efficient to inefficient equilibrium; iv) increasing the proportion of agents with positive NPV projects causes a shift from inefficient to efficient equilibrium; v) equilibrium financial contracts are either equity-like or ‘pure’ debt contracts; vi) agents with negative (positive) NPV projects earn rents only in (non- )wealth-constrained economies; vii) agents earn rents only when employing pure debt contracts; and viii) removing storage technology destroys the only Pareto-efficient equilibrium in non-wealth-constrained economies. Our model enables analysis of various policies concerning financial stability, the need for sophisticated financial institutions, development aid, and the promotion of entrepreneurship.financial market efficiency, adverse selection, financial contracts, creation of firms

Optimal bank transparency

Consider a competitive bank whose illiquid asset portfolio is funded by short-term debt that has to be refinanced before the asset matures. We show that in this setting maximal transparency is not socially optimal, and that the existence of social externalities of bank failures further lowers the optimal level of transparency. Moreover, asset risk taking recedes as the level of transparency declines towards the socially optimal level. As for the sign of the transparency impact on refinancing risk, it is negative given the risk associated with the asset, but ambiguous if one accounts for its indirect effect via risk taking.financial stability; information disclosure; market discipline; Basel III; global games

Investor protection and business creation

We study the effects of investor protection on the availability of external finance, entrepreneurship, and creation of new firms in an equilibrium search model of private capital markets. In addition to search frictions, we examine contract frictions, specifically interim and ex post moral hazard problems stemming from entrepreneurs’ possibilities to expropriate financiers. In our model, the government chooses the level of investor protection that determines the transferability of match surplus between entrepreneurs and financiers. The results indicate that anything that increases (decreases) entrepreneurship also increases (decreases) the creation of start-ups. The effect of investor protection on the creation of start-ups thus hinges on the relative importance of various search and contract frictions. Only when investor protection has a sufficiently large impact on the ex post moral hazard problem relative to the interim moral hazard does strengthening investor protection enhance start-up creation. We also find that search frictions dilute the beneficial effect of investor protection and that contract frictions modify the standard Hosios condition for efficiency.investor protection; start-up financing; private equity market; entrepreneurship; corporate finance

Capital Market Development, Corporate Governance and the Credibility of Exchange Rate Pegs

We build a model of a fixed exchange rate regime with escape clauses and output persistence. In the spirit of the literature following the Asian crisis in 1997, persistence in our model arises from the inability of the domestic financial institutions to intermediate international credit. Our main message is that since persistence generates long run credibility effects that are sensitive to the prevailing policy preferences, the choice of an optimal exchange rate regime and the preference for a policy target should reflect the degree of development of the domestic financial institutions. If the domestic financial market suffers from credit constraints that generate persistence, the likelihood of self-fulfilling currency crisis may be reduced if the government assigns a greater weight on the output stabilisation objective. However, if financial market liberalisation successfully eliminates the credit constraints, liberalisation should be associated with a switch in policy preferences more in favour of exchange rate stability.

Multihoming in the market for payment media: evidence from young Finnish consumers

In the market for payment media, some consumers use only one medium when paying for their point-of-sale transactions, while others multihome and use many. As this pattern reflects the diffusion of new payment media, we take a look at the determinants of the adoption of new payment media through the window of multihoming. Using data on young Finnish consumers, we find that one key determinant of multihoming behaviour is consumer awareness. Our instrumental variable estimates indicate that the better informed use 1.2–1.3 times more payment media than the less informed. Because many payment method innovations are typically first used simultaneously with established methods, our results suggest that increasing consumer awareness could significantly speed up the adoption of new means of payment, such electronic money and mobile payments.payment media; multihoming; consumer awareness; adoption of financial technology

Equilibrium in financial markets with adverse selection

We study a financial market adverse selection model where all agents are endowed with initial wealth and choose to invest as entrepreneurs or financiers, or not to invest. We show that often a lack of outside finance leads to the emergence of financial markets where availability of outside finance leads to autarky. We find that i) there exist Pareto-efficient and inefficient equilibria; ii) adverse selection has more severe consequences for poorer economies; iii) increasing initial wealth may cause a shift from Pareto-efficient to inefficient equilibrium; iv) increasing the proportion of agents with positive NPV projects causes a shift from inefficient to efficient equilibrium; v) equilibrium financial contracts are either equity-like or ‘pure’ debt contracts; vi) agents with negative (positive) NPV projects earn rents only in (non-)wealth-constrained economies; vii) agents earn rents only when employing pure debt contracts; and viii) removing storage technology destroys the only Pareto-efficient equilibrium in non-wealth-constrained economies. Our model enables analysis of various policies concerning financial stability, the need for sophisticated financial institutions, development aid, and the promotion of entrepreneurship.financial market efficiency; adverse selection; financial contracts; creation of firms

Does State Street lead to Europe? The case of financial exchange innovations

We study whether and to what extent financial exchange innovations are in practice patentable in Europe. We find that exchange-related applications initially increased significantly after the State Street decision but subsequently decreased. The clear majority (65%) of applications come from the U.S. investment banks and exchanges themselves being among the most active innovators. But patents were not easly granted in response to these applications (only 3% of them led to valid patent). The high post-grant opposition rate (41%) for granted patents indicated that competitors tightly monitored each other’s patents. The evidence, as augmented with clinical case studies, supports the notion that, for an invention to pass the inventive step requirement for obtaining a European patent, it should have technical features for solving a sufficiently challenging technical problem. Our evidence suggests that patentability standards for financial methods have not weakened in Europe in the aftermath of the State Street decision and that the inventive step requirement constitutes a major obstacle for applicants to overcome in order to obtain a financial exchange patent in Europe.finance patents; financial innovation; business method patents; patent policy; management of intellectual property in financial services

Investor protection and business creation

We study the effects of investor protection on the availability of external finance, entrepreneurship, and creation of new firms in an equilibrium search model of private capital markets. In addition to search frictions, we examine contract frictions, specifically interim and ex post moral hazard problems stemming from entrepreneurs’ possibilities to expropriate financiers. In our model, the government chooses the level of investor protection that determines the transferability of match surplus between entrepreneurs and financiers. The results indicate that anything that increases (decreases) entrepreneurship also increases (decreases) the creation of start-ups. The effect of investor protection on the creation of start-ups thus hinges on the relative importance of various search and contract frictions. Only when investor protection has a sufficiently large impact on the ex post moral hazard problem relative to the interim moral hazard does strengthening investor protection enhance start-up creation. We also find that search frictions dilute the beneficial effect of investor protection and that contract frictions modify the standard Hosios condition for efficiency.investor protection, start-up financing, private equity market, entrepreneurship, corporate finance

Candidate Quality

We analyze the topical question of how the compensation of elected politicians affects the set of citizens choosing to run. To this end, we develop a sparse and tractable citizen-candidate model of representative democracy with ability differences, informative campaigning and political parties. Our results suggest that primaries, campaign costs and rewards have previously overlooked interactions that should be studied in a unified framework. Surprisingly, increasing the reward may lower the average candidate quality when the campaigning costs are sufficiently high.Politicians' competence; Career concerns; Campaigning costs; Rewards for elected officials; Citizen-candidate models

Enhancing Bank Transparency: A Re-assessment

Transparency regulation aims at reducing financial fragility by strengthening market discipline. There are however two elementary properties of banking that may render such regulation inefficient at best and detrimental at worst. First, an extensive financial safety net may eliminate the disciplinary effect of transparency regulation. Second, achieving transparency is costly for banks, as it dilutes their charter values, and hence it also reduces their private costs of risk-taking. We consider both the direct costs of complying with disclosure requirements and the indirect transparency costs stemming from imperfect property rights governing information and specify the conditions under which transparency regulation can (and cannot) reduce financial fragility.information disclosure; market discpline; bank transparency; deposit insurance; financial safety net