Suchergebnisse

Because of their higher interest rates, subprime mortgages are subject to substantial prepayment risk as borrowers who succeed in improving their creditworthiness systematically prepay leaving those with higher credit risk in the mortgage pool. Lenders anticipated this problem and attached substantial prepayment penalties to subprime mortgages. Some state governments responded with regulations that banned prepayment penalties. This created a natural experiment in which the effects of prepayment penalties on the supply and performance of endorsed mortgages can be evaluated. Ho and Pennington Cross (2008) have demonstrated that these regulations reduced the supply of mortgage credit. In this paper, the effect of prepayment penalty restrictions on the performance of endorsed subprime mortgages is tested. Theory predicts that the restrictions should raise prepayment and lower default. The empirical results strongly confirm the first prediction while the effects on default have the correct sign but lack significance.

Abstract
While it is well known that financing and infrastructure constraints negatively affect economic development, the correlations between these constraints have been underexplored in the economics literature. This paper focuses on the implications of financing and infrastructure constraints by studying firms' investments in electric generators as a response to public power interruptions. A theoretical model demonstrates that financial constraints lower economic returns on owning electric generators, making firms less likely to install private generators if the public power supply becomes unreliable. The empirical results show that, controlling for other factors, firms with a lower cost of external financing are more likely to own private generators in areas where the public power supply is less reliable. Observed correlations among reliability of power supply, financial constraints, and investment in electric generators thus appear consistent with the hypothesis that underdeveloped financial markets and inadequate infrastructure can be a greater barrier for economic development than either of these constraints separately.

AbstractThis study uses the latest 2011 round of the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey for the Russian Federation to take a closer look at regional‐level factors influencing the business environment in Russia. Specifically, the study explores the role of regional administrations and variables of administrative continuity and governor origin in shaping regional business environment. The findings reveal that regional businesses in Russia are (1) acutely anxious about administrative transitions (as expressed in gubernatorial replacements) and favour administrative continuity, and (2) favour government officials that are locally embedded. The analysis suggests that many localities in Russia have witnessed the emergence of mutually beneficial state‐business arrangements that are inimical to economic competition.

This study uses the latest 2011 round of the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey for the Russian Federation to take a closer look at regional-level factors influencing the business environment in Russia. Specifically, the study explores the role of regional administrations and variables of administrative continuity and governor origin in shaping regional business environment. The findings reveal that regional businesses in Russia are (1) acutely anxious about administrative transitions (as expressed in gubernatorial replacements) and favor administrative continuity, and (2) favor government officials that are locally embedded. The analysis suggests that many localities in Russia have witnessed the emergence of mutually beneficial state-business arrangements that are inimical to economic competition. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions. http://olabout.wiley.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-820227.html

This study takes advantage of a publicly salient policy sphere -- road quality -- in the Russian Federation's capital city to explore the use of digital technologies as means of aggregating information and demonstrating government capacity and effectiveness. It focuses on the potential linkage between road quality based on citizens' complaints and electoral outcomes in two rounds of Moscow mayoral elections in 2013 and 2018. The data on more than 200,000 online potholes' complaints were collected and combined with local election data. The causal relationship between these two processes is established, making use of an arguably exogenous variation in the differences across local weather conditions during the heating season that differentially affects pothole creation but is uncorrelated with electoral outcomes. The results indicate that greater use of digital technologies (measured by pothole complaints) results in an increased number of votes and a higher margin of victory for the incumbent. They highlight digital technologies' role as a tool to create participatory governance mechanisms and convey to the public an image of a transparent, responsive, and capable government.