David C. Webb

Too Much Investment: A Problem of Asymmetric Information

This paper shows that under plausible assumptions, the inability of lenders to discover all of the relevant characteristics of borrowers results in investment in excess of the socially efficient level. Raising the rate of interest above the free market level will restore optimality. This conflicts with generally held views and is contrasted with the Stiglitz-Weiss model. It is shown that the assumptions which yield overinvestment support debt as the equilibrium method of finance. However, under the Stiglitz-Weiss assumptions, used to derive an underinvestment result, equity is shown to be the equilibrium method of finance.

Advantageous Selection in Insurance Markets

This paper reverses the standard conclusion that asymmetric information plus competition results in insufficient insurance provision. Risk-tolerant individuals take few precautions and are disinclined to insure, but are drawn into a pooling equilibrium by the low premiums created by the presence of safer, more risk-averse types. Taxing insurance drives out the reckless clients, allowing a strict Pareto gain. This result depends on administrative costs in processing claims and issuing policies, as does the novel finding of a pure-strategy, partial-pooling, sub-game-perfect, Nash equilibrium in the insurance market.

Does credit rationing imply insufficient lending

By combining hidden types and hidden action, this paper shows that the existence of credit rationing need not imply that lending exceeds the full-information level. In this plausible class of models, the appropriate policy is not to subsidise or tax lending but to make alternatives to entrepreneurship more attractive. Doing so may actually increase the number of those borrowing to set up their own business and yield a strict Pareto improvement. The results extend to equilibria characterised by redlining. So, if interest rates fail to clear credit markets, it does not follow that policy should make loans easier to obtain.

Incentive Design under Loss Aversion

Compensation schemes often reward success but do not penalize failure. Fixed salaries with stock options or bonuses have this feature. Yet the standard principal–agent model implies that pay is normally monotonically increasing in performance. This paper shows that, under loss aversion, there will be intervals over which pay is insensitive to performance, with the use of carrots but not sticks is frequently optimal, especially when risk aversion is low and reference income is endogenous. A further benefit of capping losses, for example through options, is to discourage reckless behavior by executives seeking to resurrect their fortunes.

Efficient credit rationing

Abstract This paper shows that credit rationing is endemic to competitive capital markets in which information is symmetrically distributed. Equilibrium contracts may restrict loans to a size well below that at which backruptcy is a threat. The model predicts that credit rationing will be most severe on projects of intermediate risk and decreases the more costly it is for creditors to recover bad debts. However, there is no case for government intervention, despite the usual identification of credit rationing as a per se capital market imperfection.

The Importance of Incomplete Information in Explaining the Existence of Costly Bankruptcy

The standard theory of capital structure argues that firms trade off the tax advantage of debt against ba nkruptcy costs. R. A. Haugen and L. W. Senbet (1978) pointed out that there is a problem with this theory: if bankruptcy involves deadweig ht costs, shareholders and bondholders have an incentive to renegotia te before it occurs since in this way bankruptcy, and its costs, can be avoided. This implies costly bankruptcy will not occur and casts d oubt on the validity of the standard theory. This paper uses noncoope rative bargaining theory to formally model this idea. It then shows t hat if there is incomplete information, costly bankruptcy can occur. Copyright 1987 by The Review of Economic Studies Limited.

Risk, Adverse Selection and Capital Market Failure

This paper investigates the implications of adverse selection for capital market equilibrium when borrowers are risk averse. K. J. Arrow and R. C. Lind (1970) argue that when capital markets fail to spread risk properly interest rates are too high. The market adds a risk premium that the social planner would not. This paper shows that when projects differ in quality, in a pooling equilibrium, the private market sets interest rates too low even accounting for the risk premium. Hence, there is overinvestment. The result is shown to be robust to the introduction of moral hazard. Copyright 1990 by Royal Economic Society.

Credit market efficiency and tax policy in the presence of screening costs

After establishing the existence of capital market equilibrium in the presence of asymmetric information and screening costs, this paper examines tax policies designed to correct the attendant externalities. When projects differ in expected returns it is shown to be ambiguous whether costly private screening weakens or strengthens the case for an interest income tax. However, when projects differ only in riskiness, as in the model of Stiglitz and Weiss, screening opportunities cause the efficiency case for tax intervention to disappear.

Credit Rationing: Something's Gotta Give

Equilibrium credit rationing, in the sense of Stiglitz and Weiss, is shown to imply that the marginal cost of funds to the borrower is infinite. So entrepreneurs have an overwhelming incentive to cut their loans by a dollar and so avoid rationing. Ways of doing this include scaling down the project, decreasing consumption, or delaying the project to accumulate more savings. Credit rationing emerges for indivisible projects only when delay causes sufficient deterioration. Borrowers then apply for funds at the first opportunity, but, counterfactually, once denied a loan, they never reapply. Conditions for credit rationing are stringent indeed.

The role of interest rate taxes in credit markets with divisible projects and asymmetric information

This paper assumes that entrepreneurs have divisible projects with random payoffs. However, managerial skill is unobservable to outsiders. Projects are assumed to be financed through debt. A pooling equilibrium is shown to exist in which good and bad entrepreneurs sell debt at the same price. If both types of entrepreneur have a positive probability of bankruptcy, project scale will be too large. This provides a prima facie case for raising interest rates and hence the cost of capital through taxation. If in equilibrium only the poor entrepreneurs go bankrupt, there is an outlying possibility that interest rates are too low and a subsidy is called for.