My research focuses on the reasons for banking crises and the corresponding policy rules that could help prevent such crises. This abstract briefly reviews the two essays in my dissertation. The first essay focuses on the optimal mechanism design of the deposit insurance system while the second essay studies the impact of international illiquidity on domestic banking crises. The Recent Deposit Insurance Reform in the U.S. raised the coverage limit for certain types of deposits. In chapter II, I study the optimal coverage limit in a model of deposit insurance in the banking system. Because of the coverage limit, depositors have incentives to monitor the bank’s risk-taking behavior, threatening banks with the withdrawal of deposits if necessary. The model includes risk-taking banks, heterogeneous depositors, and a benevolent insurance company providing deposit insurance. I find that partial coverage combined with risk-sensitive premia in the presence of capital requirements can improve social welfare and manage banks’ risktaking behavior. Moreover, when a partial coverage limit is in place, banks are better off by finding a balance between the higher premia and the depositors’ monitoring and withdrawals. Unlike chapter II, chapter III focuses on the role played by international illiquidity. I build a dynamic general equilibrium model (DGEM) of a small, open economy. The features I include in the model are nontrivial demands for fiat currencies, unanticipated sunspots, and financial/banking crises originated by sudden stops of foreign capital inflows are. This chapter gives us a better understanding of the performance of alternative exchange rate regimes and associated monetary policies under a simple setup. I show the existence of multiple equilibria that may be ranked based on the presence of binding information constraints and on welfare. Moreover, I show that a strong connection of the scope for existence and for indeterminacy of equilibria with the underlying policy regime. I also find that the presence of binding multiple reserve requirements help in reducing the scope for financial fragility and panic equilibria.

This dissertation is a theoretical exploration of commonly used policy tools meant to improve market performance. The first chapter examines the use of prizes and grants as instruments for encouraging research and development. The second chapter investigates the welfare impact of price caps in oligopoly markets with endogenous entry. The third chapter studies the relationship between deposit insurance and bank risk taking, when a banker is motivated by reciprocity. The first chapter explores the use of grants and prizes as tools for encouraging research activity and innovation. Grants and prizes are commonly used by public and private research funders, and encourage R&D activity in different ways. Grants encourage innovation by subsidizing research inputs, while prizes reward research output. A common rationale for prizes is moral hazard; if a funder cannot observe all relevant research inputs then prizes create a strong incentive for R&D activity. In this chapter, it is shown that grants are a more efficient means of funding when a researcher's ability is unknown to the funder (adverse selection). When both adverse selection and moral hazard problems exist, a grant may emerge as an optimal funding mechanism, provided the moral hazard problem is relatively weak. In settings where the moral hazard problem is sufficiently strong, a grant emerges as part of an optimal funding mechanism, in conjunction with a prize. These results are useful for understanding different funding mechanisms used by both public and private entities. The second chapter, which is based on joint work with Stan Reynolds, examines the impact of price caps in oligopoly markets with endogenous entry. In the case of deterministic demand, reducing a price cap yields increased total output, consumer welfare, and total welfare. This result falls in line with classic results on price caps in monopoly markets, and with results for oligopoly markets with a fixed number of firms. These comparative static results for price caps need not hold when demand is stochastic and the number of firms is fixed, but recent results in the literature show that a welfare improving price cap does exist. We show that a welfare-improving cap need not exist in the case where demand is stochastic and entry is endogenous. In addition, we provide restrictions on the demand function such that a welfare-improving price cap exists under endogenous entry and stochastic demand. The third chapter, which is based on a joint project with Martin Dufwenberg, investigates the relationship between deposit insurance, risk taking, and insolvency. Empirical evidence suggests that the introduction of deposit insurance increases risk taking by banks and results in a greater chance of insolvency. The common rationale for this connection is that deposit insurance decreases the incentive for customers to monitor their banks, and invites excessive risk taking. In this chapter, it is argued that this classic explanation is somewhat puzzling. If customers can monitor their bank's behavior, certainly the insurance provider (FDIC) has this same ability. If this is the case, appropriate mechanisms could limit the moral hazard problem. We put forth an alternative explanation, and demonstrate that deposit insurance invites excessive risk taking when a banker is motivated by reciprocity.

This dissertation consists of three essays: (I) Double Liability, Moral Hazard and Deposit Insurance Schemes, (II) Contract Costs, Lender Identity and Bank Loan Pricing, and (III) Bank Capital Structure and Differential Lending Behaviour. The first essay proposes to add double liability to a deposit insurance scheme to induce insurees (depository financial institutions) to reveal their true risk types. The second essay looks at the differential lending patterns of American banks versus Japanese banks. The third essay discusses the relationship between the characteristics of a lender and those of the borrower.

Deposit insurance varies greatly across countries due to each country’s specific environment. The purpose of this study is to find what factors may affect coverage limit in deposit insurance. First, we implement panel data over the period of 1960 to 2008 including 78 countries’ political setting, bank industry’s structural differences and overall economic factors. The empirical results show that countries with lower saving rate, interest spread and government debt tend to have higher coverage. However, coverage tends to be lower in more political open countries. Second, we performed panel data logit model to find that increasing government debt would reduce the probability of increasing coverage limits. Third, the regression of variable changes shows strong negative significance in the relationship of interest spread and coverage over GDP per capita. The main contribution of this thesis is to identify significant influences to the coverage limit. This could provide reference factors when considering the setting of Deposit insurance scheme to insure financial stability.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--George Mason University, 2007. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Jan. 21, 2008). Thesis director: Bryan Caplan. Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Economics. Vita: p. 150. Includes bibliographical references (p. 142-149). Also available in print.

>Magister Scientiae - MSc / Commercial banks play a dominant role in facilitating the economic growth of a country by acting as an intermediary between the de cit spending unit (borrowers) and the surplus spending unit (lenders). In particular, they transform short-term deposits into medium and long-term loans. Due to their important role in the economy and the nancial system as a whole, commercial banks are subject to high regulation standards in most countries. According to an international set of capital standards known as the Basel Accords, banks are required to hold a minimum level of capital as a bu er to protect their depositors and the nancial market in an event of severe unexpected losses caused by nancial risk. Moreover, government regulators aim to maintain public con dence and trust in the banking system through the use of a deposit insurance scheme (DIS). Deposit insurance (DI) has the e ect of eliminating mass withdrawals of deposits in an event of a bank failure. However, DI comes at a cost. The insuring agent is tasked with estimating a fairly priced premium that the bank should be charged for DI.

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This thesis assesses the significance of real bank credit in stimulating real output paying particular attention to the factors that prompt financial intermediation within the economy. The thesis contributes to the existing literature on finance and growth by providing fresh empirical evidence in the case of the Nigerian economy and Africa as a whole. In the context of Nigeria, credit Granger causes output, but the reverse is not true. In testing the factors that mobilise credit, I find that exports are negatively related to credit. Moreover, since credit usually fund non-oil exports, I also find that oil exports is negatively related to credit, whereas non-oil exports is positively related to credit. The latter also explains why capital inflows and imports are positively related to credit in my study. Extending the analysis to Africa as a whole, I find that causality is bi-directional. In examining the factors which mobilise credit (based on three measures of output); I find that output consistently exerts a positive influence on credit, whereas inflation and exports exert the opposite effect. However, the impact of government expenditure on credit is ambiguous. These results are re-confirmed when I use an alternative estimator for robustness. In line with the variables used in the Nigerian case, both capital inflow and imports positively influence credit while the impact of exports is negative for the whole of Africa. When examining the drivers of output in the African context, I find that credit and exports positively influence output whereas inflation exerts the opposite effect. The role of government expenditure is equally ambiguous. A further robustness test again confirms these results. The relationship between exports and credit in the literature is positive hence, it is important to investigate why the opposite holds in the Nigerian and African context. As such, I examine the efficiency of the banking system using three different measures, which includes loans, other earnings and other operating income since this may explain the counter intuitive result: export sales in Africa are largely intermediated by multi-national firms who prefer to obtain financing from credit markets that are more efficient than the African banking system. Across Africa, efficiency of the banking system is 74%, 76% and 92% when loans, other earnings and other operating income are respectively used as the output variables. This implies that 26% of credit is allocated in an unproductive way while 24% and 8% of expenditure could be better managed. When dividing the sample into medium and low-income countries, I find the respective levels of efficiency for each of the measures to be 94% and 11%; 83% and 0%; 90% and 0% for loans, other earnings and other operating income as the output variables respectively. This result supports bank loans as the best output variable, which I use further in the estimation. Further clues as to why there should be such differences in efficiency are obtained when the sample is split by regions, since there are regional variations in the use of credit. The Central African region is the least efficient. In these economies, resources are typically held and allocated by a few individuals.

This research has studied bank risk management in relation to efficient bank regulation in the form of optimal bank financial reorganization. Efficient banking regulation can be achieved only if it includes closure policies which prevent moral hazard behaviour; in turn, they should enhance bank regulators' accountability. Yet, Basel II gives more discretion to domestic banking authorities and focuses more on the implementation of best practices of risk management. This creates a gap between the needs of efficient banking regulation and the objectives of Basel II, on the one hand, and Indonesian bank regulation on the other. To fill the gaps, the Fries, Mella-Barral, Peraudin (FMP) model, under a robust regulatory regime concept, is used to provide a framework for banking regulation. Optimal bank reorganization aims at achieving efficient bank regulation, where bank regulators are assumed to act as social planners. In this thesis, optimal bank reorganization is analysed within the concept of a "robust regulatory regime". Optimal bank reorganization comprises closure rules and bailout policies arising endogenously through the interaction of two factors, namely regulators' attempts to minimize discounted, expected bankruptcy costs, and equity-holders' incentives to recapitalise banks. The shareholders will be allowed to continue to control the bank if the bank is well capitalized. The cash flow approach to optimal bank financial reorganization is adopted. The subsidy policies for financially ailing banks consider the implementation of socially-optimal closure rules at minimum financial cost to regulators and which reduce moral hazard. The FMP model implies that optimal bank reorganization requires a deposit insurance scheme. The FMP model involves capital and risk management as crucial factors. This research includes an empirical study of the implementation of the FMP model in Indonesia using the American call option approach. Maximum likelihood estimates in VAR and GARCH are applied to monthly data on the market return and equity and deposit values for relatively-large Indonesian banks, including regional banks and foreign banks. The results indicate that the authorities can establish an optimal closure rule for each bank, levy fair deposit insurance premiums that can be adjusted to take account of quantitative and qualitative factors, estimate optimal subsidies at different deposit insurance premiums, and identify the banks' imminence to bankruptcy. (Continues...).