IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jbfina/v11y1987i3p449-471.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Competition, risk neutrality and loan commitments

Author

Listed:
  • Boot, Arnoud
  • Thakor, Anjan V.
  • Udell, Gregory F.

Abstract

We rationalize fixed rate loan commitments (forward credit contracting with options) in a competitive credit market with universal risk neutraility. Future interest rates are random, but there are no transactions costs. Borrowers finance projects with bank loans and choose ex post unobseravable actions that affect project payoffs. Credit contract design by the bank is the outcome of a (non-cooperative) Nash game between the bank and the borrower. The initial formal analysis is basically in two steps. First, we show that the only spot credit market Nash equilibria that exist are inefficient in the sense that they result in welfare losses for borrowers due to the bank's informational handicap. Second, we show that loan commitments, because of their ability to weaken the link between the offering bank's expected profit and the loan interest rate, enable to the complete elimination of informationally induced welfare losses and thus produce an outcome that strictly Pareto dominates any spot market equilibrium. Perhaps our most surprising result is that, if the borrower has some initial liquidity, it is better for the borrower to use it now to pay a commitment fee and buy a loan commitment that entitles it to borrow in the future rather than save it for use as an inside equity in conjunction with spot borrowing.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Boot, Arnoud & Thakor, Anjan V. & Udell, Gregory F., 1987. "Competition, risk neutrality and loan commitments," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 449-471, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jbfina:v:11:y:1987:i:3:p:449-471
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0378-4266(87)90043-4
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Chan, Yuk-Shee & Thakor, Anjan V, 1987. "Collateral and Competitive Equilibria with Moral Hazard and Private Information," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 42(2), pages 345-363, June.
    2. Millon, Marcia H & Thakor, Anjan V, 1985. "Moral Hazard and Information Sharing: A Model of Financial Information Gathering Agencies," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 40(5), pages 1403-1422, December.
    3. 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.
    4. James, Christopher, 1981. "Self-Selection and the Pricing of Bank Services: an Analysis of the Market for Loan Commitments and the Role of Compensating Balance Requirements," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 16(5), pages 725-746, December.
    5. Campbell, Tim S, 1978. "A Model of the Market for Lines of Credit," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 33(1), pages 231-244, March.
    6. Thakor, Anjan V. & Udell, Gregory F., 1987. "An economic rationale for the pricing structure of bank loan commitments," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 271-289, June.
    7. Ram T. S. Ramakrishnan & Anjan V. Thakor, 1984. "Information Reliability and a Theory of Financial Intermediation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 51(3), pages 415-432.
    8. 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.
    9. Douglas Gale & Martin Hellwig, 1985. "Incentive-Compatible Debt Contracts: The One-Period Problem," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 52(4), pages 647-663.
    10. Melnik, Arie & Plaut, Steven E., 1986. "The economics of loan commitment contracts: Credit pricing and utilization," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 267-280, June.
    11. Jensen, Michael C. & Meckling, William H., 1976. "Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 305-360, October.
    12. Sudipto Bhattacharya, 1980. "Nondissipative Signaling Structures and Dividend Policy," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 95(1), pages 1-24.
    13. Stiglitz, Joseph E & Weiss, Andrew, 1981. "Credit Rationing in Markets with Imperfect Information," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(3), pages 393-410, June.
    14. Wilson, Charles, 1977. "A model of insurance markets with incomplete information," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 167-207, December.
    15. Dwight M. Jaffee & Thomas Russell, 1976. "Imperfect Information, Uncertainty, and Credit Rationing," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 90(4), pages 651-666.
    16. Harris, Milton & Raviv, Artur, 1979. "Optimal incentive contracts with imperfect information," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 231-259, April.
    17. Kanatas, George, 1987. "Commercial paper, bank reserve requirements, and the informational role of loan commitments," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 425-448, September.
    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. Sumit Agarwal & Souphala Chomsisengphet & John C. Driscoll, 2004. "Loan commitments and private firms," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2004-27, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    2. Poitevin, Michel, 1989. "Information et marchés financiers : une revue de littérature," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 65(4), pages 555-589, décembre.
    3. Mark Gertler, 1988. "Financial structure and aggregate economic activity: an overview," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, pages 559-596.
    4. Christian At & Lionel Thomas, 2015. "Optimal Lending Contracts under both Adverse Selection and Moral Hazard," Post-Print halshs-01308331, HAL.
    5. Committee, Nobel Prize, 2022. "Financial Intermediation and the Economy," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2022-2, Nobel Prize Committee.
    6. N. Berger, Allen & F. Udell, Gregory, 1998. "The economics of small business finance: The roles of private equity and debt markets in the financial growth cycle," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 22(6-8), pages 613-673, August.
    7. Ozan Güler & Mike Mariathasan & Klaas Mulier & Nejat G. Okatan, 2021. "The real effects of banks' corporate credit supply: A literature review," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 59(3), pages 1252-1285, July.
    8. Mervyn K. Lewis, 1992. "Modern Banking in Theory and Practice," Revue Économique, Programme National Persée, vol. 43(2), pages 203-228.
    9. Charles W. Calomiris & R. Glenn Hubbard, 1993. "Internal Finance and Investment: Evidence from the Undistributed Profits Tax of 1936-1937," NBER Working Papers 4288, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Catherine Refait, 2005. "Soutien financier ou mise en faillite de l'entreprise? Comprendre la décision de la banque," Revue Finance Contrôle Stratégie, revues.org, vol. 8(1), pages 131-157, March.
    11. Niinimäki, J-P., 2019. "Credit markets under asymmetric information regarding the law," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 380-390.
    12. Ying Yan, 1997. "Credit rationing, bankruptcy cost, and the optimal debt contract for small business," Working Papers (Old Series) 9702, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    13. Markus K. Brunnermeier & Thomas M. Eisenbach & Yuliy Sannikov, 2012. "Macroeconomics with Financial Frictions: A Survey," Levine's Working Paper Archive 786969000000000384, David K. Levine.
    14. Diamond, Douglas W, 1989. "Reputation Acquisition in Debt Markets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(4), pages 828-862, August.
    15. J. Christina Wang, 2003. "Loanable funds, risk, and bank service output," Working Papers 03-4, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    16. Fohlin, Caroline, 1999. "Universal Banking in Pre-World War I Germany: Model or Myth?," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 36(4), pages 305-343, October.
    17. Liu, Wei & Spanjers, Willem, 2005. "Social capital and credit constraints in informal finance," Economics Discussion Papers 2005-5, School of Economics, Kingston University London.
    18. Anat R. Admati & Peter M. DeMarzo & Martin F. Hellwig & Paul Pfleiderer, 2010. "Fallacies, Irrelevant Facts, and Myths in the Discussion of Capital Regulation: Why Bank Equity is Not Expensive," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2010_42, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    19. Mario Tirelli, 2017. "Optimal Financial Contracts With Unobservable Investments," Departmental Working Papers of Economics - University 'Roma Tre' 0230, Department of Economics - University Roma Tre.
    20. Anjan V. Thakor, 2004. "Capital Requirements, Monetary Policy, and Aggregate Bank," Finance 0411027, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    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:eee:jbfina:v:11:y:1987:i:3:p:449-471. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jbf .

    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.