0000000000061445

AUTHOR

Matilde O. Fernández-blanco

Financing successful small business projects

Purpose – The current credit rationing strongly influences the viability of SMEs innovation projects. In this context, the practice of screening borrowers by project success probability has become a paramount consideration for both lenders and firms. The aim of this paper is to test the screening role of loan contracts that consider collateral-interest margins simultaneously. Design/methodology/approach – This paper presents an empirical analysis that uses a unique data set composed of 323 bank loans granted by 28 banks to SMEs backed by a Spanish Mutual Guarantee Institution. Findings – The results show that appropriate combinations of collateral and interest rates can distinguish between…

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Entrepreneurship and Credit Rationing: How to Screen Successful Projects in this Current Crisis Period

The current credit rationing heavily influences entrepreneurship and, more dramatically, the viability of innovation projects. In this context, mechanisms to screen successful projects are of paramount importance for both lenders and entrepreneurs. We present an experiment to test the collateral-interest mechanism of credit screening. Our results confirm that incentive-compatible pairs of collateral-interest rate can distinguish between projects of different success probability, even in moral hazard settings.

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Hedging foreign exchange rate risk: Multi-currency diversification

Abstract This article proposes a multi-currency cross-hedging strategy that minimizes the exchange risk. The use of derivatives in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is not common but, despite its complexity, can be interesting for those with international activities. In particular, the reduction in the exchange risk borne through the use of natural multi-currency cross-hedging is measured, considering Conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR) and Value-at-Risk (VaR) for measuring market risk instead of the variance. CVaR is minimized using linear programmes, while a multiobjective genetic algorithm is designed for minimizing VaR, considering two scenarios for each currency. The results obtai…

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Several risk measures in portfolio selection: Is it worthwhile?

Este articulo aborda el problema de seleccion de carteras empleando tres medidas de riesgo ampliamente utilizadas: varianza o desviacion tipica, Valor en Riesgo (VaR) y Valor en Riesgo Condicional (CVaR). Nuestro principal objetivo es evaluar la relevancia de incluir simultaneamente varias medidas del riesgo, dada la complejidad computacional que supone. La principal contribucion de este articulo es la propuesta de solucion de dos modelos que consideran simultaneamente dos medidas del riesgo muy utilizadas: el modelo de media-varianza-VaR y el modelo media-VaR-CVaR. La inclusion del VaR como uno de los objetivos a minimizar convierte el problema de optimizacion en no convexo, por lo que el …

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A naïve approach to speed up portfolio optimization problem using a multiobjective genetic algorithm

a b s t r a c t Genetic algorithms (GAs) are appropriate when investors have the objective of obtaining mean-variance (VaR) efficient frontier as minimising VaR leads to non-convex and non-differential risk-return optimisation problems. However GAs are a time-consuming optimisation technique. In this paper, we propose to use a naive approach consisting of using samples split by quartile of risk to obtain complete efficient frontiers in a reasonable computation time. Our results show that using reduced problems which only consider a quartile of the assets allow us to explore the efficient frontier for a large range of risk values. In particular, the third quartile allows us to obtain efficie…

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Information acquisition in SME's relationship lending and the cost of loans

Abstract This study analyzes the effect of the reputation SMEs get in a relationship lending on the cost of next loans. A unique dataset of 734 Spanish SMEs' relationship lending provides information on a loan-by-loan basis about the ex post previous loan performance, which measures reputation. No prior empirical research differentiates the cost of loans following a defaulted loan from the costs of those following a successfully repaid loan. Results show that lenders obtain information about borrowers' risk-level during relationship lending and use this information. Loans granted after a successful one pledge significantly lower collateral and interest rate than loans granted after a defaul…

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Minimising value-at-risk in a portfolio optimisation problem using a multi-objective genetic algorithm

[EN] In this paper, we develop a general framework for market risk optimisation that focuses on VaR. The reason for this choice is the complexity and problems associated with risk return optimisation (non-convex and non-differential objective function). Our purpose is to obtain VaR efficient frontiers using a multi-objective genetic algorithm (GA) and to show the potential utility of the algorithm to obtain efficient portfolios when the risk measure does not allow calculating an optimal solution. Furthermore, we measure differences between VaR efficient frontiers and variance efficient frontiers in VaR-return space and we evaluate out-sample capacity of portfolios on both bullish and bearis…

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