Financial Institutions

The author argues that although we do not have, and are not likely to have, a complete theory of what precipitated the Asian financial crisis, there are certain characteristics of the evonomy and certain government policies that increased these countries' vulnerability to a crisis and amplified the aftershocks.

Previous theories of financial market rationing focussed on a single market, either the credit or the equity market. An interesting question is whether credit and equity rationing are mutually compatible, and how they interact. We consider a model with two-dimensional asymmetric information, where entrepreneurs have private information about both the expected returns and the risk of their projects. We show that credit and equity rationing may occur individually or simultaneously.

In a dynamic model of moral hazard, competition can undermine prudent bank behavior. While capital-requirement regulation can induce prudent behavior, the policy yields Pareto-inefficient outcomes. Capital requirements reduce gambling incentives by putting bank equity at risk. However, they also have a perverse effect of harming banks' franchise values, thus encouraging gambling. Pareto-efficient outcomes can be achieved by adding deposit-rate controls as a regulatory instrument, since they facilitate prudent investment by increasing franchise values.

In the immediate aftermath of the onset of the global financial crises, attention was focused on the weaknesses in the borrowing countries; the suggestion was that, by pursuing unsound policies and indulging in "crony capitalism" these countries had brought the ills upon themselves.

The author explains why he thinks the Global Development Network is so important and why it is that the World Bank has taken such an active role in acting as a catalytic agent in promoting it, and develops some of the underlying epistemology that lies behind the creation of this new institution.

"Money's Worth" plays a prominent role in the U.S. Social Security debate. We cover all that good stuff in this chapter.