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摘要：美国宾西法尼亚大学财政硕士论文定制-Traditional theories of intermediation are based on transaction costs and asymmetricinformation-Intermediation; Risk management; Delegated monitoring; Banks; Participation

t,
are presented, while Section 5 discusses the risk reduction activities
that intermediaries should take. Section 6 then outlines the importance of participation
costs as another rationale for intermediation and assisting in risk
management. Finally, Section 7 contains concluding remarks.
2. Review and critique of current intermediation theory
In the traditional Arrow±Debreu model of resource allocation, ®rms and
households interact through markets and ®nancial intermediaries play no role.
When markets are perfect and complete, the allocation of resources is Pareto
ecient and there is no scope for intermediaries to improve welfare. Moreover,
the Modigliani±Miller theorem applied in this context asserts that ®nancial
structure does not matter: households can construct portfolios which o€set
any position taken by an intermediary and intermediation cannot create value
(see Fama, 1980).
A traditional criticism of this standard market-based theory is that a large
number of securities are needed for it to hold except in special cases. However,
the development of continuous time techniques for option pricing models and
the extension of these ideas to general equilibrium theory have negated this
1462 F. Allen, A.M. Santomero / Journal of Banking & Finance 21 (1998) 1461±1485
criticism. Dynamic trading strategies allow markets to be e€ectively complete
even though a limited number of securities exist.
Such an extreme view ± that ®nancial markets allow an ecient allocation
and intermediaries have no role to play ± is clearly at odds with what is observed
in practice. Historically, banks and insurance companies have played
a central role. This appears to be true in virtually all economies except emerging
economies which are at a very early stage. Even here, however, the development
of intermediaries tends to lead the development of ®nancial markets
themselves (see McKinnon, 1973).
In short, banks have existed since ancient times, taking deposits from households
and making loans to economic agents requiring capital. Insurance, and in
particular marine insurance, also has a very long history. In contrast, ®nancial
markets have only been important recently, and then only in a few countries,
primarily the UK and the US. Even there, banks and insurance companies
have played a major role in the transformation of savings from the household
sector into investments in real assets.
Our understanding of the role or roles played by these intermediaries in the
®nancial sector is found in the many and varied models in the area known as
intermediation theory. These theories of intermediation have been built on the
models of resource allocation based on perfect and complete markets by suggesting
that it is frictions such as transaction costs and asymmetric information
that are important in understanding intermediation. Gurley and Shaw (1960)
and many subsequent authors have stressed the role of transaction costs.
For example, ®xed costs of asset evaluation mean that intermediaries have
an advantage over individuals because they allow such costs to be shared. Similarly,
trading costs mean that intermediaries can more easily be diversi®ed
than individuals.
Looking for frictions that relate more to investors' information sets, numerous
authors have stressed the role of asymmet