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Essays in banking

University of British Columbia

This dissertation examines two issues in the theory of banking: the role and efficiency of a monopoly bank in a spatial economy and, the design of a deposit insurance contract. Chapters 2 and 3 of the thesis present the development and analysis of a simple production economy with two types of agents. Lenders have an endowment of one unit of a good that may be consumed or invested in a firm. Firms have access to a project but lack the capital necessary to operate it and thus are forced to borrow: firms' projects are identically independently distributed crosssectionally. A simple information asymmetry prevents efficient contracting by lenders and firms and results in deadweight default costs being incurred. One way these deadweight costs could be avoided is to establish a "delegated monitor"—a bank—who collects deposits from the lenders and makes loans to firms. This may result in an efficiency gain since the firms' projects are Ltd. so, as the bank makes more loans, the probability that it defaults will be lower than the probability that an individual firm defaults. This diversification reduces the probability that the bank will fail and the probability that default costs are incurred. However, I assume that these costs are related to distance. This restricts the bank's ability to diversify and may induce costly strategic behavior on the part of the bank. The bank may also lend 'locally' in that it may attract deposits in a region yet not make loans to firms near those depositors. The social welfare implications of this bank are examined in Chapter 3. The results show that the socially optimal outcome is one that restricts the firms' ability to compete with the bank in the debt market and that credit rationing may also be efficient. Chapter 4 examines a model where a deposit insurance scheme is designed by a regulator whose objective is to maximize social welfare. There is a single bank in the economy which can be one of two types: the true type is unknown to the regulator. The results show that the regulator's efficacy is improved when regular insurance premia are combined with a premia that are refunded to solvent banks—akin to a deposit insurance fund.

Thesis/Dissertation

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2009-06-04

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/8782

Business Administration

University of British Columbia

UBCV

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