(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)"> (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)">
[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mtl/montec/9501.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Environmental Risks and Bank Liability

Author

Listed:
  • Boyer, M.
  • Laffont, J.J.
Abstract
The 1980 Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act in the US has extended the tools of the Environmental Protection Agency to recover cleanup costs caused by pollution damages from the liable parties. In particular, the banks who finance the firms causing environmental damages may be considered liable. In various court cases, banks have been found liable, while they have been exempted in others. We develop a multipricipal-agent model in which the insurance sector may insure the firm for the pollution risk and the bank may lend money for investment. Under complete information of the bank about the firm's activities, the limited liability of the firm induces excessive investment and sufficient care but full liability of the bank creates the appropriate internalization of the environmental risk. This rationalization of the law must be qualified because in general the bank suffers from agency problems (adverse selection and moral hazard) with respect to the firm. In the adverse selection case, full liability of the bank leads to underinvestment. Partial liability is better but may fail to implement the optimal second best allocation. In the case of moral hazard, full responsibility is killing the project too often while still leading to low care too often. Partial responsibility may achieve the second best optimal allocation but in some cases the level of responsibility necessary to induce the proper level of care is too high for the project to be financed by the bank. Le Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act [CRECLA] de 1980 aux États-Unis a donné à l'Agence de protection de l'environnement des pouvoirs de recouvrement des coûts de décontamination auprès des parties responsables de la pollution. Les banques des entreprises concernées peuvent, en particulier, être tenues responsables des dommages et elles l'ont effectivement été dans certains cas. Nous proposons ici un modèle principal-agent avec un secteur assur
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Boyer, M. & Laffont, J.J., 1995. "Environmental Risks and Bank Liability," Cahiers de recherche 9501, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ.
    • Handle: RePEc:mtl:montec:9501
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Evan F. Koenig, 1985. "Indirect Methods for Regulating Externalities Under Uncertainty," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 100(2), pages 479-493.
    2. Bolton, Patrick & Scharfstein, David S, 1990. "A Theory of Predation Based on Agency Problems in Financial Contracting," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(1), pages 93-106, March.
    3. Brander, James A. & Lewis, Tracy R., 1986. "Oligopoly and Financial Structure: The Limited Liability Effect," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(5), pages 956-970, December.
    4. Beaudry, Paul & Boyer, Marcel & Poitevin, Michel, 1993. "Le rôle du collatéral dans le report des investissements en présence d’asymétries d’information," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 69(1), pages 71-90, mars.
    5. Tobias C. Hoschka, 1994. "Bancassurance in Europe," Palgrave Macmillan Books, Palgrave Macmillan, number 978-1-349-23455-4, October.
    6. Demski, Joel S. & Sappington, David E. M. & Spiller, Pablo T., 1988. "Incentive schemes with multiple agents and bankruptcy constraints," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 44(1), pages 156-167, February.
    7. Sandler, Todd & Sterbenz, Frederic P., 1988. "Externalities, pigouvian corrections, and risk attitudes," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 15(4), pages 488-504, December.
    8. Michael T. Olexa, 1991. "Contaminated Collateral and Lender Liability: CERCLA and the New Age Banker," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 73(5), pages 1388-1393.
    9. 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.
    10. Sappington, David, 1983. "Limited liability contracts between principal and agent," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 1-21, February.
    11. Hyde, Charles E & Rausser, Gordon C & Simon, Leo K, 2000. "Regulating Multiple Polluters: Deterrence and Liability Allocation," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 41(2), pages 495-521, May.
    12. 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.
    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. Fay, Marianne & Martimort, David & Straub, Stéphane, 2021. "Funding and financing infrastructure: The joint-use of public and private finance," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).
    2. Arping, Stefan & Diaw, Khaled M., 2008. "Sunk costs, entry deterrence, and financial constraints," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 490-501, March.
    3. Le Pape, Nicolas, 2001. "Endettement des firmes et comportements de rivalité : l’apport des principaux modèles en économie industrielle," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 77(2), pages 281-302, juin.
    4. Rosellon Cifuentes, M.A., 1999. "Essays on financial policy, liquidation values and product markets," Other publications TiSEM 802f644e-3e93-4815-bf33-8, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    5. Dang, Viet Anh, 2010. "Optimal financial contracts with hidden effort, unobservable profits and endogenous costs of effort," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 50(1), pages 75-89, February.
    6. 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.
    7. Fluck, Zsuzsanna, 1999. "The Dynamics of the Management-Shareholder Conflict," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 12(2), pages 379-404.
    8. Jeanne, Olivier, 2003. "Why Do Emerging Economies Borrow in Foreign Currency?," CEPR Discussion Papers 4030, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    9. Cleary, Sean & Povel, Paul & Raith, Michael, 2007. "The U-Shaped Investment Curve: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 42(1), pages 1-39, March.
    10. Jain, N., 2016. "Financing and Mode of Entry in Foreign Markets," Working Papers 15/16, Department of Economics, City University London.
    11. Mr. Rodolphe Blavy, 2005. "Monitoring and Commitment in Bank Lending Behavior," IMF Working Papers 2005/222, International Monetary Fund.
    12. Josef Schosser & Jochen Wilhelm, 2018. "Costly state verification and truthtelling: a note on the theory of debt contracts," Economic Theory Bulletin, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 6(2), pages 129-139, October.
    13. M. Martin Boyer, 2004. "On the Use of Hierarchies to Complete Contracts when Players Have Limited Abilities," CIRANO Working Papers 2004s-41, CIRANO.
    14. Lewis A. Kornhauser & W. Bentley MacLeod, 2012. "Contracts between Legal Persons [The Handbook of Organizational Economics]," Introductory Chapters,, Princeton University Press.
    15. Patrick Bolton & Neng Wang & Jinqiang Yang, 2019. "Optimal Contracting, Corporate Finance, and Valuation with Inalienable Human Capital," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 74(3), pages 1363-1429, June.
    16. Grenadier, Steven R. & Wang, Neng, 2005. "Investment timing, agency, and information," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(3), pages 493-533, March.
    17. Enrique Schroth & Dezsö Szalay, 2010. "Cash Breeds Success: The Role of Financing Constraints in Patent Races," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 14(1), pages 73-118.
    18. Hauenschild, Nils & Stahlecker, Peter, 2004. "Loan financing, bankruptcy, and optimal supply," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 115-140.
    19. Mathias Dewatripont & Patrick Legros & Steven A. Matthews, 2003. "Moral Hazard and Capital Structure Dynamics," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 1(4), pages 890-930, June.
    20. Roman Inderst & Holger M. Mueller, 2006. "Informed Lending and Security Design," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(5), pages 2137-2162, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    POLLUTION; RISK; BANKS;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages
    • Q2 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation

    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:mtl:montec:9501. 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: Sharon BREWER (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cdmtlca.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.