D82 - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism DesignReturn

This paper investigates how lender-borrower relationships affect credit cost for small and medium sized companies (SMEs). We use data within the period 2006–2015 for the Polish SME sector and deploy panel regression models to analyse how the number and length of banking relationships influence the financial costs of a random sample of Polish SMEs. We document that the price of capital decreases as relationships progress. Outcomes of the research are thus inconsistent with the “hold-up” hypothesis. Moreover, we find evidence that supports the view that multiple banking relationships generate more financial benefits for companies than a relationship with one lender.

Nonprofit organizations in transition countries experience low trust and consequently low income from donations. The study introduces one particular solution to the problem, certification, and examines its impact on the quality of the nonprofit organizations in the market. The situation is illustrated in a game theoretical model, with a manager, donor, certifier, and the charity providing a charitable good: for simplicity, charity is either good or bad: A good charity spends all the resources on the charitable good, and a bad one diverts all resources to the private consumption of its manager (for-profit in disguise). We show that for a wide parameter range and for two different disclosure rules, the presence of a certifier in the market increases the incentives for managers to choose good charities, leading to an improvement in the market as the share of good charities increases.

We investigate the influence which the financial condition of a multinational bank group may have on the lending rates of its affiliates, using data from the ten biggest banks in the Czech Republic under foreign control. The analysis is based on a theory of bank lending in which the implicit opportunity costs of lending by a foreign bank affiliate are influenced by the scarcity of funds within the multinational conglomerate. The theory predicts that parent banks' influence should be stronger in loan segments with more pronounced information asymmetry. Our empirical model, which explains the interest rate charged by the affiliate by means of affiliate-level controls and a parent influence variable, is tested for three categories of commercial non-financial borrowers (domestically owned firms, foreign-owned firms and the self-employed). Evidence of parent influence is found in a limited number of cases of banks and borrower classes for which the constraint on fund flow within the parent bank group is likely to be tight, particularly when the borrower class is of strategic importance for the affiliate's overall performance.

This paper analyses possible options how to improve the risk adjustment of the health insurance system in the Czech Republic. From the possible options it argues for including pharmaceutical cost groups (PCGs) as additional risk factors since it is an improvement that can be implemented almost instantaneously. On real data from an anonymous sickness fund it confirms that predictive performance of PCGs models is consistently better than the performance of the demographic model that is currently used. The study also describes and examines the Czech health insurance market and implications of proposed changes of policy makers. Based on experience from other countries we point to a problem of risk selection if the changes are not accompanied by a tighter regulation, specifically in the form of improved risk adjustment formula.

This paper extends the costly enforcement model of optimal financing to the case of investment projects financed by several lenders when the legal and economic situation in the emerging market economy does not allow for commitment to contracts and for securitization of credit contracts through use of collateral. We consider the asymmetric situation when only one lender is a big strategic investor. All other lenders are small passive investors. We first provide the sufficient and necessary condition for renegotiation proofness. Then we show that the optimal verification is deterministic. We also discuss the conditions under which the optimal contract is a debt contract. Our methodological framework may be used for example for the analysis of credit provision in food supply chains, where often many small non-strategic investors (small farm-level producers) interact with some big strategic investor (the advanced technology supplier) in the explicit or implicit crediting of some parts of food supply chain like the food processing plants or storage facilities.

This paper deals with government interventions in agricultural credit markets in the Czech Republic. I first describe the institutional setting and the empirics of agricultural credit in the Czech Republic. I explain the activities of the Czech Agricultural Guarantee Fund and compare it with similar institutions dealing with the support of agricultural credit in transition and developed market economies. Then I introduce an adverse selection model of credit provision with proportional credit guarantees. The model distinguishes two market regimes - a developed post-transition market economy and a transition economy. This distinction between transition and post-transition economies leads to different results generated by credit markets. Most notably, there is a failure of collateral as a screening instrument in credit markets of transition economies. With economic stabilization collateral resumes its role as a screening instrument.