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Showing results 1 to 10 of approximately 26.
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Journal Article
The credit risk-contingency system of an Asian development bank
This article offers a new method for the evaluation of financial institutions, one that combines socioeconomic survey data with appropriate accounting standards. A government-operated development bank in Thailand is found to be offering a risk-contingency or insurance system while being regulated as a more standard, loan-generating bank. Farmer clients experiencing adverse shocks receive indemnities that improve their well-being. With proper provisioning and accounts, that welfare gain could be weighed against premia or government subsidies.
Working Paper
Distinguishing limited commitment from moral hazard in models of growth with inequality
We use non-parametric, reduced form and structural techniques to distin-guish the micro-economic foundations of two models of growth with increasing inequality using new data from rural and semi-urban households in Thailand. We estimate a limited commitment model that is similar to Evans and Jovanovic (1989) and a moral hazard model that is an extension of Aghion and Bolton (1996). Both models emphasize the role of occupational choice and financial constraints. While the models share many implications, they are distinguished by their assumptions about the nature of financial market ...
Journal Article
Formal and informal financing in a Chicago neighborhood
This article documents not only the actual use of banks, but also the widespread use of alternative financing mechanisms, using data from a survey of households and businesses in a Hispanic neighborhood of Chicago.
Discussion Paper
Small-business access to trade credit: some evidence of ethnic differences
Based on findings from a survey of Black Households, this paper highlights socioeconomic and demographic factors that many influence the utilization of different financial markets. In addition, it discusses the potentially important role that informal financial networks can play in racial/ethnic communities. We propose that education programs, proactive community participation and partnerships between financial institutions and community organizations are important for greater access to credit and financial services among Black Households.
Report
Who Sees the Trades? The Effect of Information on Liquidity in Inter-Dealer Markets
Dealers, who strategically supply liquidity to traders, are subject to both liquidity and adverse selection costs. While liquidity costs can be mitigated through inter-dealer trading, individual dealers? private motives to acquire information compromise inter-dealer market liquidity. Post-trade information disclosure can improve market liquidity by counteracting dealers? incentives to become better informed through their market-making activities. Asymmetric disclosure, however, exacerbates the adverse selection problem in inter-dealer markets, in turn decreasing equilibrium liquidity ...
Report
Barriers to household risk management: evidence from India
Financial engineering offers the potential to significantly reduce the consumption fluctuations faced by individuals, households, and firms. Yet much of this potential remains unfulfilled. This paper studies the adoption of an innovative rainfall insurance product designed to compensate low-income Indian farmers in the event of insufficient rainfall during the primary monsoon season. We first document relatively low adoption of this new risk management product: Only 5-10 percent of households purchase the insurance, even though they overwhelmingly cite rainfall variability as their most ...
Report
Patterns of rainfall insurance participation in rural India
This paper describes the contract design and institutional features of an innovative rainfall insurance policy offered to smallholder farmers in rural India and presents preliminary evidence on the determinants of insurance participation. Insurance take-up is found to be decreasing in basis risk between insurance payouts and income fluctuations, higher among wealthy households, and lower among households that are credit constrained. These results match predictions of a simple neoclassical model appended with borrowing constraints. Other patterns are less consistent with the benchmark model. ...
Discussion Paper
The Economics of Bank Supervision: So Much to Do, So Little Time
While bank regulation and supervision are the two main components of banking policy, the difference between them is often overlooked and the details of supervision can appear shrouded in secrecy. In this post, which is based on a recent staff report, we provide a framework for thinking about supervision and its relation to regulation. We then use data on supervisory efforts of Federal Reserve bank examiners to describe how supervisory efforts vary by bank size and risk, and to measure key trade-offs in allocating resources.
Working Paper
Firms as clubs in Walrasian markets with private information
Using private information and club theories, this paper develops a theory of firms in general equilibrium. Firms are defined to be assignments of technologies and agents to clubs. In equilibrium, firms form endogenously and multiple types may co-exist. We formulate the general equilibrium problem as both a Pareto program and as a competitive equilibrium. Welfare and existence theorems are provided. In the competitive equilibrium, club memberships are priced and purchased, so the market determines which organizations exist as well as who is a member. Pareto optima and competitive equilibria of ...
Journal Article
Small business finance in two Chicago minority neighborhoods
The authors use survey data to measure the use of formal and informal sources of financing by owners of small businesses in two ethnic neighborhoods. The authors find substantial differences across ethnic groups in the amount of start-up funding obtained and in the use of trade credit.