IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/esx/essedp/2957.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Allocation of Liability: Why Financial Intermediation?

Author

Listed:
  • Wang, Tianxi

Abstract

The paper proposes that the organization of financial markets is decided by the allocation of the liability to repay investors. Based on the liability allocation, the paper examines all possible modes of organizing finance and monitoring in an economy a la Townsend (1979). The equilibrium mode is either Financial Intermediation (FI) where the monitor alone takes the liability, or Conglomeration where it is taken by a Conglomerate composed of entrepreneurs and the monitor. Conglomeration also implements the benefit of diversification, which thus does not drive FI. Moreover, opposed to what Diamond (1984) would predict, monitoring costs advantage FI.

Suggested Citation

  • Wang, Tianxi, 2009. "The Allocation of Liability: Why Financial Intermediation?," Economics Discussion Papers 2957, University of Essex, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:esx:essedp:2957
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repository.essex.ac.uk/2957/
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hart, Oliver & Moore, John, 1990. "Property Rights and the Nature of the Firm," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(6), pages 1119-1158, December.
    2. Martin F. Hellwig, 2000. "Financial Intermediation with Risk Aversion," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 67(4), pages 719-742.
    3. Bengt Holmstrom & Jean Tirole, 1997. "Financial Intermediation, Loanable Funds, and The Real Sector," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(3), pages 663-691.
    4. Dilip Mookherjee & Ivan Png, 1989. "Optimal Auditing, Insurance, and Redistribution," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 104(2), pages 399-415.
    5. Diaz-Gimenez, Javier & Prescott, Edward C. & Fitzgerald, Terry & Alvarez, Fernando, 1992. "Banking in computable general equilibrium economies," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 16(3-4), pages 533-559.
    6. Douglas W. Diamond, 1996. "Financial intermediation as delegated monitoring: a simple example," Economic Quarterly, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, issue Sum, pages 51-66.
    7. Douglas W. Diamond, 1984. "Financial Intermediation and Delegated Monitoring," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 51(3), pages 393-414.
    8. Williamson, Stephen D., 1986. "Costly monitoring, financial intermediation, and equilibrium credit rationing," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 159-179, September.
    9. Fernando Alvarez & Terry J. Fitzgerald, 1992. "Banking in computable general equilibrium economies: technical appendices I and II," Staff Report 155, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    10. Gorton, Gary & Winton, Andrew, 2003. "Financial intermediation," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 8, pages 431-552, Elsevier.
    11. Philip Bond, 2004. "Bank and Nonbank Financial Intermediation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 59(6), pages 2489-2529, December.
    12. Townsend, Robert M., 1979. "Optimal contracts and competitive markets with costly state verification," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 265-293, October.
    13. Krasa, Stefan & Villamil, Anne P., 1992. "Monitoring the monitor: An incentive structure for a financial intermediary," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 57(1), pages 197-221.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Zhixiong Zeng, 2013. "A theory of the non-neutrality of money with banking frictions and bank recapitalization," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 52(2), pages 729-754, March.
    2. Jin, Yi & Zeng, Zhixiong, 2014. "Banking risk and macroeconomic fluctuations," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 350-360.
    3. Régis Breton, 2003. "A Smoke Screen Theory of Financial Intermediation," Post-Print halshs-00257188, HAL.
    4. Davide IACOVONI & Alberto ZAZZARO, 2000. "Legal System Efficiency, Information Production, and Technological Choice: A Banking Model," Working Papers 129, Universita' Politecnica delle Marche (I), Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali.
    5. Spiros Bougheas & Tianxi Wang, 2015. "Optimal Organization of Financial Intermediaries," CESifo Working Paper Series 5452, CESifo.
    6. Niinimäki, Juha-Pekka & Takalo, Tuomas & Kultti, Klaus, 2006. "The role of comparing in financial markets with hidden information," Research Discussion Papers 1/2006, Bank of Finland.
    7. Niinimäki, Juha-Pekka & Takalo, Tuomas & Kultti, Klaus, 2006. "The role of comparing in financial markets with hidden information," Bank of Finland Research Discussion Papers 1/2006, Bank of Finland.
    8. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2006_001 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Juha-Pekka Niinimäki & Tuomas Takalo, 2007. "Benchmarking and Comparing Entrepreneurs with Incomplete Information," Finnish Economic Papers, Finnish Economic Association, vol. 20(2), pages 91-107, Autumn.
    10. Berger, Allen N. & Espinosa-Vega, Marco A. & Frame, W. Scott & Miller, Nathan H., 2011. "Why do borrowers pledge collateral? New empirical evidence on the role of asymmetric information," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 55-70, January.
    11. Angelo Baglioni & Luca Colombo, 2009. "Managers’ Compensation And Misreporting: A Costly State Verification Approach," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 47(2), pages 278-289, April.
    12. Larsson, Bo & Wijkander, Hans, 2015. "Dynamic Banking with Endogenous Risk Based Funding Cost: Value Maximization, Risk-taking, Responses to Regulation and Credit Contraction," Research Papers in Economics 2015:3, Stockholm University, Department of Economics.
    13. Karel Janda, 2006. "Agency Theory Approach to the Contracting between Lender and Borrower [Smluvní vztah mezi věřitelem a dlužníkem z hlediska přístupu teorie zastoupení]," Acta Oeconomica Pragensia, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 2006(3), pages 34-47.
    14. Gu, Chao & Monnet, Cyril & Nosal, Ed & Wright, Randall, 2023. "Diamond–Dybvig and beyond: On the instability of banking," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    15. Villacorta, Alonso, 2018. "Business cycles and the balance sheets of the financial and non-financial sectors," ESRB Working Paper Series 68, European Systemic Risk Board.
    16. Kilian Huber, 2021. "Are Bigger Banks Better? Firm-Level Evidence from Germany," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 129(7), pages 2023-2066.
    17. Bénédicte Coestier & Nathalie Fombaron, 2003. "L'audit en assurance," THEMA Working Papers 2003-41, THEMA (THéorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), Université de Cergy-Pontoise.
    18. Caffera, Marcelo & Dubra, Juan & Figueroa, Nicolás, 2018. "Mechanism design when players’ preferences and information coincide," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 56-61.
    19. Gregory Phelan, 2017. "Correlated Default and Financial Intermediation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 72(3), pages 1253-1284, June.
    20. Brunnermeier, Markus K. & Oehmke, Martin, 2013. "Bubbles, Financial Crises, and Systemic Risk," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1221-1288, Elsevier.
    21. Cheng Wang & Ruilin Zhou, 2010. "Equilibrium Lending Mechanism And Aggregate Activity," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 51(3), pages 631-651, August.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:esx:essedp:2957. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Essex Economics Web Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/edessuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.