Reducing Asymmetric Information in Insurance Markets: Cars with Black Boxes

We examine the effects of ex post revelation of information about the risk type or the risk-reducing behavior of insureds in automobile insurance markets both for perfect competition and for monopoly. Specifically, we assume that insurers can offer a contract with information revelation ex post, i.e., after an accident has occurred, in addition to the usual second-best contracts. Under moral hazard this always leads to a Pareto-improvement of social welfare. For adverse selection we find that this is also true except when bad risks under self-selecting contracts received an information rent, i.e., under monopoly or under competition with cross-subsidization from low to high risks. Regulation can be used to establish Pareto-improvement also in these cases. Privacy concerns do not alter our positive welfare results.information moral hazard, adverse selection, insurance

Emergence of Electronic Markets: Implication of Declining Transport Costs on Firm Profits and Consumer Surplus

Electronic coordination may drastically reduce transport costs, especially for digital or digitalizable products where local markets may actually shrink to a point in space. In the present paper we use a model with differentiated products to analyze the impact of declining transport costs on profits and consumer surplus. While consumers always gain, the effect on producers depends on the degree of product differentiation and the magnitude of transport costs in the electronic market mode. Profits do only rise if products are substantially differentiated – in this case the positive effect of an extended consumer base due to the preference for product differentiation dominates the negative effect of intensified competition. This result is amplified if transport costs in the electronic market mode are substantial. In this case profits only increase if products are almost independent.

Intra-firm Coordination and Horizontal Merger

We look at an industry of Cournot oligopolists each of which consists of production facilities which enjoy some degree of freedom in deciding their output quantities and that way influence the total output of a firm. This structure can be motivated e.g. the existence of profit centers or by the specifics of a cooperative firm. The extent of coordination inside the firms is captured in a simple way, and market equilibrium is derived for potentially asymmetric firms using the concept of a replacement function. We use this model to address the question of profitability of horizontal mergers and of the welfare consequences of such mergers. Contrary to the standard literature, we find a wide range of potentially profitable mergers without having to refer to cost synergies. This result is driven by the effect of size in terms of the number of production facilities and by the strategic consequences of intra-firm decentralization. A number of seemingly conflicting results from the literature can be considered special cases of our model.merger, oligopoly, organization, vertical coordination

Mergers Among German Cooperative Banks. A Panel-based Stochastic Frontier Analysis

Based on an unbalanced panel of all Bavarian cooperative banks for the years of 1989-97 which includes information on 283 mergers, we analyze motives and cost effects of small-scale mergers in German banking. Estimating a frontier cost function with a time-variable stochastic efficiency term we show that positive scale and scope effects from a merger arise only if the merged unit closes part of the former branch network. When we compare actual mergers to a simulation of hypothetical mergers, size effects of observed mergers turn out to be slightly more favorable than for all possible mergers. Banks taken over by others are less efficient than the average bank in the same size class, but exhibit on average the same efficiency as the acquiring firms. For the post-merger phase, our empirical results provide no evidence for efficiency gains from merging, but point instead to a leveling off of differences among the merging units.banking, mergers, efficiency, stochastic frontier

A Note on Hedging a Loan Portfolio

In the framework of the industrial economics approach to banking we extend the analysis of hedging against default on loans to the case of two types of credit risk. Standard results on the optimal hedge volume and the hedging effectivity from the single-risk case are shown to carry over to the portfolio case in a non-trivial but intuitive way.banking, credit risk, loan portfolio, credit derivative, hedging effectivity

The Economics of Regional Demarcation in Banking

Cooperation among savings and cooperative banks was criticized by the European Commission because of potentially anti-competitive effects. In an industrial economics model of banks taking deposits and giving loans we look at regional demarcation as one of such cooperative practices. There are two adjacent markets with one savings or cooperative bank being focused on each one and one private commercial bank serving both. We find that abolishing regional demarcation indeed increases total loan volume. Savings or cooperative banks always improve market performance and do better without regional demarcation which shields the private commercial bank from aggressive competition by these banks.banking, competition, cooperation, non-profit firms

The Economics of Regional Demarcation in Banking

Cooperation among savings and cooperative banks was criticized by the European Commission because of potentially anti-competitive effects. In an industrial economics model of banks taking deposits and giving loans we look at regional demarcation as one of such cooperative practices. There are two adjacent markets with one savings or cooperative bank being focused on each one and one private commercial bank serving both. We find that abolishing regional demarcation indeed increases total loan volume. Savings or cooperative banks always improve market performance and do better without regional demarcation which shields the private commercial bank from aggressive competition by these banks.banking, competition, cooperation, non-profit firms

Managing Credit Risk with Credit and Macro Derivatives

The industrial organization approach to the microeconomics of banking augmented by uncertainty and risk aversion is used to examine credit derivatives and macro derivatives as instruments to hedge credit risk for a large commercial bank. In a partial-analytic framework we distinguish between the probability of default and the loss given default, model different forms of derivatives, and derive hedge rules and strong and weak separation properties between deposit and loan decisions on the one hand and hedging decisions on the other. We also suggest how bank-specific macro derivatives could be designed from common macro indices which serve as underlyings of recently introduced financial products.banking, credit risk, systematic risk, credit derivative, macro derivative

Credit Risk and Credit Derivatives in Banking

Using the industrial economics approach to the microeconomics of banking we analyze a large bank under credit risk. Our aim is to study how a risky loan portfolio affects optimal bank behavior in the loan and deposit markets, when credit derivatives to hedge credit risk are available. We examine hedging without and with basis risk. In the absence of basis risk the usual separation result is confirmed. In case of basis risk, however, we find a weaker notion of separation.credit risk, credit derivatives, banking firm, risk aversion

Strategic Hedging

For a Cournot duopoly with a foreign firm exporting to the home firm's market hedging against unfavorable shifts in the stochastic spot exchange rate is analyzed. In a two-stage setting with product market and hedging decisions we show that hedging can be used as a strategic device. Under constant and decreasing absolute risk aversion an increase in hedging volume by the foreign firm promotes its exports and lowers the equilibrium output of the home firm. In contrast to the well-known full-hedging result in a perfectly competitive environment, we find that the foreign firm will over-hedge for strategic reasons. Furthermore, the separation result from the literature on hedging under perfect competition no longer holds in the duopoly framework, i.e., equilibrium output levels depend on the preference of the foreign firm and the probability distribution of the spot exchange rate.Exports, Market structure, Hedging