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Working Paper
The Economics of Platforms in a Walrasian Framework
We present a tractable model of platform competition in a general equilibrium setting. We endogenize the size, number, and type of each platform, while allowing for different user types in utility and impact on platform costs. The economy is Pareto effcient because platforms internalize the network effects of adding more or different types of users by offering type-specific contracts that state both the number and composition of platform users. Using the Walrasian equilibrium concept, the sum of type-specific fees paid cover platform costs. Given the Pareto efficiency of our environment, we ...
Working Paper
Global Spillovers of a China Hard Landing
China?s economy has become larger and more interconnected with the rest of the world, thus raising the possibility that acute financial stress in China may lead to global financial instability. This paper analyzes the potential spillovers of such an event to the rest of the world with three methodologies: a VAR, an event study, and a DSGE model. We find the sentiment channel to be the primary spillover channel to the United States, affecting global risk aversion and asset prices such as equity prices and the dollar, in addition to modest real effects through the trade channel. In comparison, ...
Working Paper
Credit access and relational contracts: An experiment testing informational and contractual frictions for Pakistani farmers
https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/ifdp/credit-access-and-relational-contracts.htm
Working Paper
Finance and Inequality : The Distributional Impacts of Bank Credit Rationing
We analyze reductions in bank credit using a natural experiment where unprecedented flooding differentially affected banks that were more exposed to flooded regions in Pakistan. Using a unique dataset that covers the universe of consumer loans in Pakistan and this exogenous shock to bank funding, we find two key results. First, banks disproportionately reduce credit to new and less-educated borrowers, following an increase in their funding costs. Second, the credit reduction is not compensated by relatively more lending by less-affected banks. The empirical evidence suggests that adverse ...
Working Paper
Corporate stress and bank nonperforming loans: Evidence from Pakistan
Using detailed administrative Pakistani credit registry data, we show that banks with low leverage ratios are both significantly slower and less likely to recognize a loan as nonperforming than other banks that lend to the same firm. Moreover, we find suggestive evidence that this lack of recognition impedes loan curing, with banks with low leverage ratios reporting significantly higher final default rates than other banks for the same borrower (even after controlling for differences in loan terms). Our empirical findings are consistent with the theoretical prediction that classifying a ...
Discussion Paper
The Effect of Real Estate Prices on Chinese Bank Performance
This note examines how a major fall in real estate prices could affect banks' performances.
Working Paper
Efficient Public Good Provision in Networks : Revisiting the Lindahl Solution
The provision of public goods in developing countries is a central challenge. This paper studies a model where each agent?s effort provides heterogeneous benefits to the others, inducing a network of opportunities for favor-trading. We focus on a classical efficient benchmark ? the Lindahl solution ? that can be derived from a bargaining game. Does the optimistic assumption that agents use an efficient mechanism (rather than succumbing to the tragedy of the commons) imply incentives for efficient investment in the technology that is used to produce the public goods? To show that the answer is ...
Working Paper
How Public Information Affects Asymmetrically Informed Lenders: Evidence from a Credit Registry Reform
We exploit exogenous variation in the amount of public information available to banks about a firm to empirically evaluate the importance of adverse selection in the credit market. A 2006 reform introduced by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) reduced the amount of public information available to Pakistani banks about a firm's creditworthiness. Prior to 2006, the SBP published credit information not only about the firm in question but also (aggregate) credit information about the firm's group (where the group was defined as the set of all firms that shared one or more director with the firm in ...