Knowledge that Transforms

Multiple banking is a common characteristic of the corporate lending, particularly of medium-sized and large firms. However, if the firms are facing distress, multiple lenders may have serious coordination problems, as has been argued in the theoretical literature. In this paper we analyse the problems of multiple banking in borrower distress empirically. We rely on a unique panel data set that includes detailed credit-file information on distressed lending relationships in Germany. In particular, it includes information on “bank pools”, a legal institution aimed at coordinating lender interests in distress. We find that the existence of small pools increases the probability of workout success and that this effect reverses when pools become large. We identify major determinants of pool formation, in particular the number of banks, the distribution of lending among banks, and the severity of the distress.

A bank determines whether potential borrowers are creditworthy, that is, whether they meet the bank's credit or lending standards. In making this determination, each bank is in competition with other banks, but without knowing the competitor banks' credit standards. The resulting unique form of competition leads to endogenous credit cycles, periodic "credit crunches". Empirical tests of this repeated bank lending game are constructed based on parameterizing public information about relative bank performance that is at the root of banks' beliefs about rival banks' lending standards. The relative performance of rival banks has predictive power for subsequent lending in the credit card market, where we can identify the main competitors. At the macroeconomic level, the relative bank performance of commercial and industrial loans is an autonomous source of macroeconomic fluctuations. In an asset pricing context, the relative bank performance is a priced risk factor for both banks and non-financial firms. The factor coefficients for non-financial firms are decreasing with size, consistent with smaller firms being more bank dependent.

This paper solves for the profit-maximizing strategy of a durable-goods monopolist when incoming demand varies over time. We first characterize the consumers' optimal purchasing decision by a cut-off rule. We then show that, under a monotonicity condition, the profit-maximizing cut-offs can be derived through a myopic algorithm, which has an intuitive marginal revenue interpretation. Consumers' ability to delay creates an asymmetry in the optimal price path, which exhibits fast increases and slow decreases. This asymmetry creates an upward bias in the level of prices, pushing them above the price charged by a firm facing the average level of demand. The optimal policy outperforms renting and can be implemented by a time-consistent best-price provision.

Many decisions involve both imprecise probabilities and intractable states of the world. Objective expected utility assumes unambiguous probabilities; subjective expected utility assumes a completely specified state space. This paper analyzes a third domain of preference: sets of consequential lotteries. Using this domain, we develop a theory of Knightian ambiguity without explicitly invoking any state space. We characterize a representation that integrates a monotone transformation of first order expected utility with respect to a second order measure. The concavity of the transformation and the weighting of the measure capture ambiguity aversion. We propose a definition for comparative ambiguity aversion and uniquely characterize absolute ambiguity neutrality. Finally, we discuss applications of the theory: reinsurance, games, and a mean–variance–ambiguity portfolio frontier.

We examine an economy in which the cost of consuming some goods can be reduced by making commitments that reduce flexibility. We show that such consumption commitments can induce consumers with risk-neutral underlying utility functions to be risk averse over small variations in income, but sometimes to seek risk over large variations. As a result, optimal employment contracts will smooth wages conditional on being employed, but may incorporate a possibility of unemployment.

Living with risk can lead to anticipatory feelings such as anxiety or hopefulness. Such feelings can affect the choice between lotteries that will be played out in the future—choice may be motivated not only by the (static) risks involved but also by the desire to reduce anxiety or to promote savouring. This paper provides a model of preference in a three-period setting that is axiomatic and includes a role for anticipatory feelings. It is shown that the model of preference can accommodate intuitive patterns of demand for information such as information seeking when a favourable outcome is very likely and information aversion when it is more likely that the outcome will be unfavourable. Behavioural meaning is given to statements such as “individual 1 is anxious” and “2 is more anxious than 1”. Finally, the model is differentiated sharply from the classic model due to Kreps and Porteus.

This paper studies the advertising agency industry in Manhattan to infer networking benefits among agencies in close spatial proximity. We use economic census data that allow us to distinguish locations at a fine level of geographic detail, so as to infer the strong effect on productivity of having more near advertising agency neighbours. Paying close attention to identification issues, we show, however, that there is extremely rapid spatial decay in the benefits of more near neighbours, even in the close quarters of southern Manhattan, a finding that is new to the literature. This suggests that high density of similar commercial establishments is important in enhancing local productivity for those industries found in large cities, where information sharing plays a critical role. Our results indicate that the benefits of more near neighbours are largely capitalized into rents rather than wages, challenging an existing literature, which estimates wage equations alone to infer agglomeration benefits.

This paper describes a new continuous-time principal-agent model, in which the output is a diffusion process with drift determined by the agent's unobserved effort. The risk-averse agent receives consumption continuously. The optimal contract, based on the agent's continuation value as a state variable, is computed by a new method using a differential equation. During employment, the output path stochastically drives the agent's continuation value until it reaches a point that triggers retirement, quitting, replacement, or promotion. The paper explores how the dynamics of the agent's wages and effort, as well as the optimal mix of short-term and long-term incentives, depend on the contractual environment.

We characterize the optimal editorial positions of the media in a model in which the media influence both voting behaviour and party policies. Political parties are less likely to choose partisan policies when more voters consume informative news. When there are two media outlets, each should be slightly biased relative to its audience in order to attract voters with relatively extreme views. Voter welfare is typically higher under a duopoly than under a monopoly. Two media outlets under joint ownership may provide more diverse viewpoints than two independent ones, but voter welfare is not always higher.

We study an infinitely repeated first-price auction with common values. We focus on one-sided incomplete information, in which one bidder learns the objects' value, which itself does not change over time. Learning by the uninformed bidder occurs only through observation of the bids. The proprietary information is eventually revealed, and the seller extracts essentially the entire rent (for large discount factors). Both players' pay-offs tend to 0 as the discount factor tends to 1. However, the uninformed bidder does relatively better than the informed bidder. We discuss the case of two-sided incomplete information and argue that, under a Markovian refinement, the outcome is pooling as information is revealed only insofar as it does not affect prices.