1、中文 3500 字 外 文 翻 译 原文： The effects of government regulations on the supply of pawn loans: evidence from 51 Jurisdictions in the U.S. Not we contribute to the modest amount of existing empirical research on the fringe banking industry by examining the effects of two jurisdiction-specific restrictive r
2、egulations on the supply of pawn loans. Controlling for poverty levels, education levels, and population density, state-by-state data presented in this paper from the 51 political jurisdictions in the United States suggests considerable effects in expected ways on five aspects of supply from the two
3、 regulations. More specifically, the study provides support for the suggestion that interest rate ceilings and a requirement to return excess proceeds from the sale of collateral items tend to reduce the number of store hours, loan/value ratios, the number of very small loans made, and the number of
4、 existing pawnshops. The lending activities of those working outside traditional depository financial institutions are sometimes characterized as fringe banking operations. Of the established fringe bankers, pawnshops constitute the most mature segment.1 Having been around for hundreds of years, paw
5、nbrokers make very small (usually under $100) loans, for short periods of time (usually around 2 months), taking physical possession of personal items as collateral. In the standard pawn transaction, the collateral is returned to the borrower upon loan repayment, or ownership automatically transfers
6、 to the lender if the borrower chooses to not repay the loan. With a few notable exceptions (which will be examined in the next section), academic research on the pawnshop industry has suffered from neglect for a long time. As Caskey (1991) has pointed out, this neglect from the academic community i
7、s unfortunate, as the percentage of the population served by the pawn industry may reach as high as 10%. Furthermore, Caskey (1991) states, B. . .economists will have a very incomplete understanding of credit markets if attention is not also given to the financial markets faced by the millions of Am
8、ericans operating independently of the banking system. In order to help correct this large gap in the academic literature, this paper will present a highly comprehensive study of the effect of two specific government regulations on five measures of the supply of pawn services. The main contributions
9、 of this paper are twofold. First of all, we extend the work of Caskey (1991, 1994) about the effects of pawnshop regulations on the number of pawnshops in a state by expanding his sample from 28 states to 51 jurisdictions. We also use an additional measure of the level of pawnshop density in each j
10、urisdiction. We confirm the results of Caskey (1991, 1994) concerning the positive relationship between the level of the interest rate ceiling and the number of pawnshops, but contradict his results by showing a significant negative relationship between the existence of the collateral return regulat
11、ion and the number of pawnshops. The second main way this paper contributes to the academic literature is by looking at the impact of pawnshop regulation on aspects of individual pawnshop behavior. We empirically test Johnson and Johnsons (1998) hypotheses concerning the impact of pawnshop regulatio
12、n on average loan amounts and loan/value ratios of individual pawnshops. We also look at the impact of regulation on the number of hours pawnshops operate. Overall, we find that pawnshop regulation has strong negative effects on five different aspects of pawnshop loan supply. These results have impl
13、ications not only for the financial services industry as a whole but also for research on price ceilings and regulations in other industries as well. As noted above, the academic research on the pawn industry is not large. However, the work that has been done in recent years has provided key insight
14、s and has prompted further research as well. The Demand for Pawn Loans: The research of Johnson and Johnson (1998) on the personal and financial characteristics of those borrowing from pawnshops makes it clear that the typical pawn borrower is not one that traditional banking institutions want as a
15、customer. Relative to most Americans, pawn borrowers tend to have less education, less accumulated wealth, lower incomes, less stable employment, higher bankruptcy rates, and a host of demographic and lifestyle patterns that quite obviously do not fit well with the model inherent in the traditional
16、bank-lending environment. Pawnbrokers have recognized these characteristics in this segment of the population, and have structured their product in a substantially different way in order to accommodate this customer. In order to serve this segment of the population profitably, pawn lenders require n
17、o credit checks, no deposit accounts, and no employment history, but (as noted) they do take physical possession of collateral in making a loan. For those having the characteristics mentioned, the alternatives to pawnshop borrowing are few.2 This lack of borrowing alternatives suggests that the dema
18、nd for pawn loans, while not large relative to the entire consumer loan market, is rather inelastic for the substantial segment of the population meeting the characteristics noted. The inelastic demand for pawn loans can also be understood in terms of time preferences. Understanding that time prefer
19、ences can be a function of many things, it is easy to see that people having the characteristics described would tend to have high time preferences in the sense that they often tend to be somewhat desperate at the margin where they find it necessary to seek the services of a pawnshop. In addition to
20、 their research on the characteristics of pawn borrowers, Johnson and Johnson (1998) specifically theorize that loan-to-value ratios and average loan sizes might be expected to vary in response to a pawn market burdened with restrictive regulations. They did not, however, attempt to test this empiri
21、cally. The Supply of Pawn Loans: On the supply side, the work of Caskey (1991, 1994, 1997) has been significant. Controlling for education levels, poverty levels, population density, and the requirement to return excess proceeds from the sale of collateral items, in an analysis of pawn activities in 28 states with effective interest rate ceilings, Caskey found the number of existing pawnshops to be positively related to the height of the ceilings. This research has been successful in demonstrating the importance of the pawn
