On Voters' Attitudes Towards Unemployment Insurance Subsidies across Regions: A Canadian Simulation

The Canadian unemployment insurance program is designed to reflect the varying risk of joblessness across regions. Regions that are considered low-risk areas subsidize higher risk ones. A region's risk is typically proxied by its relative unemployment rate. We use a dynamic, heterogeneous-agent model calibrated to Canada to analyze voters preferences between a uniformly generous unemployment insurance and the current system with asymmetric generosity. We find that Canada's unusual unemployment insurance system is surprisingly close to what voters would choose in spite of the possibilities of moral hazard and self-insurance through asset build-up.

The Optimal Capital Structure of Banks: Balancing Deposit Insurance, Capital Requirements and Tax-Advantaged Debt

The capital structure and regulation of financial intermediaries is an important topic for practitioners, regulators and academic researchers. In general, theory predicts that firms choose their capital structures by balancing the benefits of debt (e.g., tax and agency benefits) against its costs (e.g., bankruptcy costs). However, when traditional corporate finance models have been applied to insured financial institutions, the results have generally predicted corner solutions (all equity or all debt) to the capital structure problem. This paper studies the impact and interaction of deposit insurance, capital requirements and tax benefits on a bankÇs choice of optimal capital structure. Using a contingent claims model to value the firm and its associated claims, we find that there exists an interior optimal capital ratio in the presence of deposit insurance, taxes and a minimum fixed capital standard. Banks voluntarily choose to maintain capital in excess of the minimum required in order to balance the risks of insolvency (especially the loss of future tax benefits) against the benefits of additional debt. Because we derive a closed- form solution, our model provides useful insights on several current policy debates including revisions to the regulatory framework for GSEs, tax policy in general and the tax exemption for credit unions.

The Aggregate Demand for Private Health Insurance Coverage in the U.S.

This paper estimates the aggregate demand for private health insurance coverage in the U.S. using an error-correction model and by recognizing that people are without private health insurance for voluntary, structural, frictional, and cyclical reasons and because of public alternatives. Insurance coverage is measured both by the percentage of the population enrolled in private health insurance plans and the completeness of the insurance coverage. Annual data for the period 1966-1999 are used and both short and long run price and income elasticities of demand are estimated. The empirical findings indicate that both private insurance enrollment and completeness are relatively inelastic with respect to changes in price and income in the short and long run. Moreover, private health insurance enrollment is found to be inversely related to the poverty rate, particularly in the short-run. Finally, our results suggest that an increase in the number cyclically uninsured generates less of a welfare loss than an increase in the structurally uninsured.

The Effects of Credit Risk on Dynamic Portfolio Management: A New Computational Approach

The study investigates the role of credit risk in a continuous time stochastic asset allocation model, since the traditional dynamic framework does not provide credit risk flexibility. The general model of the study extends the traditional dynamic efficiency framework by explicitly deriving the optimal value function for the infinite horizon stochastic control problem via a weighted volatility measure of market and credit risk. The model's optimal strategy was then compared to that obtained from a benchmark Markowitz-type dynamic optimization framework to determine which specification adequately reflects the optimal terminal investment returns and strategy under credit and market risks. The paper shows that an investor's optimal terminal return is lower than typically indicated under the traditional mean-variance framework during periods of elevated credit risk. Hence I conclude that, while the traditional dynamic mean-variance approach may indicate the ideal, in the presence of credit-risk it does not accurately reflect the observed optimal returns, terminal wealth and portfolio selection strategies.

Redlining, the Community Reinvestment Act, and Private Mortgage Insurance

This paper examines whether neighborhood racial or income composition influences a lender's treatment of mortgage applications. Recent studies have found little evidence of differential treatment based on either the racial or income composition of the neighborhood, once the specification accounts for neighborhood risk factors. This paper suggests that lenders may favor applicants from CRA-protected neighborhoods if they obtain Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI) and that this behavior may mask lender redlining of low income and minority neighborhoods. For loan applicants who are not covered by PMI, this paper finds strong evidence that applications for units in low-income neighborhoods are less likely to be approved, and some evidence that applications for units in minority neighborhoods are less likey to be approved, regardless of the race of the applicant. This pattern is not visible in earlier studies because lenders appear to treat applications from these neighborhoods more favorably when the applicant obtains PMI.

Monetary Policy in a Portfolio Balance Model with Endogenous Physical Capital

We develop a portfolio balance model with real capital accumulation. The introduction of real capital as an asset as well as a good produced and demanded by firms enriches extant portfolio balance models of exchange rate determination. We show that expansionary monetary policy causes exchange rate overshooting, not once, but twice; the secondary repercussion comes through the reaction of firms to changed asset prices and the firms' decisions to invest in real capital. The model sheds further light on the volatility of real and nominal exchange rates, and it suggests that changes in corporate sector profitability may affect exchange rates through portfolio diversification in corporate securities.

Measuring Unemployment Insurance Generosity

In this paper, we develop a methodology to summarize the various policy parameters of an unemployment insurance scheme into a single generosity parameter. Unemployment insurance policies are multdimensional objects. They are typically defined by waiting periods, eligibility duration, benefit levels and asset tests when eligible, which makes intertemporal or international comparisons difficult. To make things worse, labor market conditions, such as the likelihood and duration of unemployment matter when assessing the generosity of different policies. We build a first model with such complex characteristics. Our model features heterogeneous agents that are liquidity constrained but can self-insure. We then build a second model that is similar, except that the unemployment insurance is simpler: it is deprived of waiting periods and agents are eligible forever with constant benefits. We then determine which level of benefits in this second model makes agents indifferent between both unemployment insurance policies. We apply this strategy to the unemployment insurance program of the United Kingdom and study how its generosity evolved over time.

Unemployment Insurance Generosity: A Trans-Atlantic Comparison

The goal of this paper is to establish if unemployment insurance policies are more generous in Europe than in the United States, and by how much. We take the examples of France and one particular American state, Ohio, and use the methodology of Pallage, Scruggs and Zimmermann (2008) to find a unique parameter value for each region that fully characterizes the generosity of the system. These two values can then be used in structural models that compare the regions, for example to explain the differences in unemployment rates.

The Export Insurance System and Export Supply of Britain

This paper examines whether or not the export insurance subsidy provided by the British government has promoted Britain.s export supply. Unlike previous studies on the effectiveness of export subsidy in export supply, the current study examines the stationarity nature of the concerned variables. The unit root tests show that all concerned variables are integrated of order one. According to Johansen cointegration test, the concerned variables are not cointegrated. The empirical evidences using the first differenced data show that the export subsidy in terms of provision of export insurances by the government is not statistically significant in increasing export supply.