DEGREASING THE WHEELS OF FINANCE

Can there be too much trading in financial markets? We construct a dynamic general equilibrium model, where agents face idiosyncratic liquidity shocks. A financial market allows agents to adjust their portfolio of liquid and illiquid assets in response to these shocks. The optimal policy is to restrict access to this market because portfolio choices exhibit a pecuniary externality: Agents do not take into account that by holding more of the liquid asset, they not only acquire additional insurance against these liquidity shocks, but also marginally increase the value of the liquid asset, which improves insurance for other market participants.     

STABILIZATION POLICY AT THE ZERO LOWER BOUND

We construct a monetary economy with aggregate liquidity shocks and heterogeneous idiosyncratic preference shocks. In this environment, not all agents are satiated at the zero lower bound (ZLB) even when the Friedman rule is the best interest‐rate policy the central bank can implement. As a consequence, central bank stabilization policy, which takes the form of repo arrangements in response to aggregate demand shocks, temporarily relaxes the liquidity constraint of impatient agents at the ZLB. Due to a pecuniary externality, this policy may have beneficial general equilibrium effects for patient agents even if they are unconstrained in their money balances.     

The societal benefit of a financial transaction tax

We provide a novel justification for a financial transaction tax for economies where agents face stochastic consumption opportunities. A financial transaction tax makes it more costly for agents to readjust their portfolios of liquid and illiquid assets in response to liquidity shocks, which increase both the demand for and the price of liquid assets. The higher price improves liquidity insurance and welfare for other market participants. We calibrate the model to U.S. data and find that the optimal financial transaction tax is 1.6% and that it reduces the volume of financial trading by 17%.     

Incomplete markets,liquidation risk,and the term structure of interest rates

We analyse the term structure of interest rates in a general equilibrium model with incomplete markets, borrowing constraint, and positive net supply of government bonds. Uninsured idiosyncratic shocks generate bond trades, while aggregate shocks cause fluctuations in the trading price of bonds. Long bonds command a “liquidation risk premium” over short bonds, because they may have to be liquidated before maturity – following a bad idiosyncratic shock – precisely when their resale value is low – due to the simultaneous occurrence of a bad aggregate shock. Our framework endogenously generates limited cross-sectional wealth heterogeneity among the agents (despite the presence of uninsured idiosyncratic shocks), which allows us to characterise analytically the shape of the entire yield curve, including the yields on bonds of arbitrarily long maturities. Agents? desire to hedge the idiosyncratic risk together with their fear of having to liquidate long bonds at unfavourable terms implies that a greater bond supply raises the level of the yield curve, while an increase in the relative supply of long bonds raises its slope.     

Quantifying borrowing constraints and precautionary savings

This paper quantifies the effects of precautionary savings. It demonstrates that Zeldes' estimate of excess consumption growth for low asset holders is consistent with a dynamic general equilibrium model with uninsurable endowment shocks when borrowing is constrained at three months' worth of average wage income. I propose a Monte Carlo simulation of the stationary equilibrium as a method of indirectly testing the hypotheses of a no-borrowing specification and a natural debt limit specification. At the estimated borrowing constraint, an increase in endowment shocks within the range of empirical findings can cause a 1.6% increase in the savings rate and a 6.9% increase in capital.     

CONSUMPTION AND TIME USE OVER THE LIFE CYCLE

We incorporate home production in a dynamic general equilibrium model of consumption and savings with illiquid housing and a collateralized borrowing constraint. The calibrated model explains life‐cycle patterns of households' time use and consumption of different categories documented from the microdata. It predicts that the interaction of the labor efficiency profile and the home production technology explains households' time use. The resulting income profiles, the endogenous borrowing constraint, and home production account for the initial hump in consumption. The complementarity of home hours, home input, and housing in home production drives the consumption profiles later in the life cycle.     

Endogenous inflows of speculative capital and the optimal currency appreciation path

Abstract This paper examines the optimal appreciation path of an undervalued currency in the presence of speculative capital inflows that are endogenously affected by the appreciation path. A central bank decides its appreciation policy based on three costs: (i) misalignment costs associated with the gap between the actual and long‐run equilibrium exchange rates, (ii) short‐term adjustment costs due to resource reallocation, and (iii) capital losses due to speculative capital inflows. Our model finds (1) when speculators face no liquidity shocks, the central bank tends to appreciate the currency quickly to discourage speculative capital; (2) when speculators face liquidity shocks, the central bank optimally pre‐commits to a slower appreciation path, and the appreciation takes the longest time when the probability of liquidity shocks takes intermediate values; (3) the central bank tends to appreciate the currency more quickly when it conducts discretionary policy.     

Aggregate savings when individual income varies

This paper examines aggregate savings in a general equilibrium model where infinitely lived households face volatile (and possibly uncertain) income paths, hold a risk-free asset, and face a borrowing constraint. I first show that the equilibrium capital stock in an economy without uncertainty, but where individual income varies, can be larger than in an economy where each household's income is constant. When individual income is stochastic and uninsurable, the equilibrium capital stock is always larger than when income is constant. This additional capital accumulation has sometimes been interpreted as precautionary savings, but I argue that much of the additional savings are generated by permanent-income motives in combination with strict borrowing constraints.     

Liquidity Shock,Credit Constraint and the Development of Private vs. State-Owned Enterprises

Based on firm level data for the period of 1998–2007, this paper attempts to explain the growth differences between private enterprises and state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in China, in the context of liquidity shocks, and institutional and financial environments. It is found that (1) when liquidity tightens, the private enterprises face stricter credit constraints than SOEs, which restricts the development of private enterprise; (2) when liquidity becomes abundant, private enterprises face fewer financial limitations and grow much faster than SOEs; (3) the effect of liquidity shocks on the growth rate gap between private enterprises and SOEs has weakened during the period 2002–2007. These findings reveal that the credit discrimination against private enterprises can be mitigated by improving institutional and financial environments, which weaken the effects of liquidity shocks on firm growth.     

The price of deposit liquidity: banks versus microfinance institutions

Using data from Bangladesh, this article finds that the liquidity premium – the difference between the interest paid on illiquid and liquid savings accounts – is higher in commercial banks than in microfinance institutions. One possible interpretation lies in the higher prevalence of time-inconsistency among the poor. The observed difference in liquidity premia could be due to poor time-inconsistent agents willing to forgo interest on illiquid savings accounts in order to discipline their future selves.     

Competitive equilibria of economies with a continuum of consumers and aggregate shocks

This paper studies competitive equilibria of a production economy with aggregate productivity shocks. There is a continuum of consumers who face borrowing constraints and individual labor endowment shocks. The dynamic economy is described in terms of sequences of aggregate distributions. The existence of competitive equilibrium is proven and a recursive characterization is established. In particular, it is shown that for any competitive equilibrium, there is a payoff equivalent competitive equilibrium that is generated by a suitably defined recursive equilibrium.     

Liquidity and asset prices in rational expectations equilibrium with ambiguous information

The quality of information in financial asset markets is often hard to estimate. Reminiscent of the famous Ellsberg paradox, investors may be unable to form a single probability belief about asset returns conditional on information signals and may act on the basis of ambiguous (or multiple) probability beliefs. This paper analyzes information transmission in asset markets when agents?? information is ambiguous. We consider a market with risk-averse informed investors, risk-neutral competitive arbitrageurs, and noisy supply of the risky asset, first studied by Vives (Rev Financ Stud 8:3?C40, 1995a, J Econ Theory 67:178?C204, 1995b) with unambiguous information. Ambiguous information gives rise to the possibility of illiquid market where arbitrageurs choose not to trade in a rational expectations equilibrium. When market is illiquid, small informational or supply shocks have relatively large effects on asset prices.     

The transmission of financial shocks in an estimated DSGE model with housing and banking

We develop a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model with housing and banking to study the transmission of financial shocks between the financial and real sectors. A deterioration in the bank's balance sheet induced by financial shocks could have amplified and persistent impacts on real activities. The amplification of the shocks are originated from financial frictions tied to households and banks. We find that a disruption in bank net worth initiated by capital quality shocks generates a decline in household loans, house prices and output. Bank liquidity shocks also have negative effects on these variables. Housing preference shocks could generate a positive comovement between house prices and output. All these findings are qualitatively consistent with empirical evidence, suggesting that these financial shocks are critical to the dynamics of house prices and other macroeconomic variables.     

When is market incompleteness irrelevant for the price of aggregate risk (and when is it not)?

In a standard incomplete markets model with a continuum of households that have constant relative risk aversion (CRRA) preferences, the absence of insurance markets for idiosyncratic labor income risk has no effect on the premium for aggregate risk if the distribution of idiosyncratic risk is independent of aggregate shocks and aggregate consumption growth is independent over time. In equilibrium, households only use the stock market to smooth consumption; the bond market is inoperative. Furthermore, the cross-sectional distributions of wealth and consumption are not affected by aggregate shocks. These results hold regardless of the persistence of idiosyncratic shocks, even when households face tight solvency constraints. A weaker irrelevance result survives when we allow for predictability in aggregate consumption growth.     

Precautionary saving or denied dissaving

Precautionary saving in response to uninsurable income risk can in principle explain the stylized fact that aggregate saving increases with the variance of income, but it is controversial how much of the observed variation in incomes is, in fact, unpredictable. Borrowing constraints offer an alternative explanation that does not require consumers to be uncertain about their future income. This paper employs a three-cohort, overlapping generations model with quadratic utility and no capital to show that, if agents are patient enough, heterogeneity alone can account for more than half the decrease in the equilibrium interest rate caused by a borrowing constraint. The possibility of facing a binding borrowing constraint in the future induces saving, and this saving increases with the cross-sectional variation in income. Another channel that pushes down the interest rate is the direct effect caused by currently constrained agents not being allowed to dissave. For patient agents, the two channels have roughly the same impact on the interest rate.     

An Analysis of a Rules-based Approach to Disciplining Export Credits in Agriculture

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the comparative static effects of rules-based disciplines for government supported export credit arrangements. The arrangements provide traders in the country offering the guarantees more favourable borrowing conditions. This may provide an advantage relative to rival exporters since the supported trader may offer better financial terms to importers. Rules that discipline implicit interest rate subsidies are appropriate when an importing country does not face liquidity constraints when borrowing. However, these rules may not be appropriate with liquidity constraints because of the potential for additionality and benefits for all exporting countries. Rules on benchmarks for insurance premiums are always appropriate because insurance subsidies unambiguously have the potential to distort markets.     

LIQUIDITY CONSTRAINTS IN A MONETARY ECONOMY*

This article presents a microfounded model of money with a consumption and an investment market. We consider an economy in which only part of the investment returns can be pledged. A liquidity constraint arises when the pledgeable part of the returns are not enough to pay for investment costs. We show that when the liquidity constraint is binding, agents may make a cash downpayment and money can perform two roles—as a provider of liquidity services and exchange services. The liquidity constraint constitutes a channel though which underinvestment occurs even at low inflation rates.     

Lenders on the storm of wholesale funding shocks: saved by the central bank?

We provide empirical evidence on banks’ responses to shocks in the wholesale funding market, using data of 181 euro area banks over the period from August 2007 to June 2013. Responses to funding liquidity shocks for both banks’ lending volumes and loan rates, to households and corporates, are analysed in a panel VAR framework. We thereby distinguish banks by country, extent of Eurosystem borrowing, bank size and capitalization. The results show that shocks in the securities and interbank markets have significant effects on loan rates and credit supply, particularly of banks in stressed countries of the periphery. The results also suggest that central bank liquidity has mitigated this effect on lending volumes. Lending to nonfinancial corporations is more sensitive to wholesale funding shocks than lending to households. Lending volumes of large banks that are typically more dependent on wholesale funding and banks with large exposure to sovereign bonds show stronger responses to wholesale funding shocks.     

What broad banks do, and markets don’t: Cross-subsidization

We show that interbank markets are a poor substitute for “broad” banks that operate across regions or sectors. In the presence of regional or sectoral asset and liquidity shocks, interbank markets can distribute liquidity efficiently, but fail to respond efficiently to asset shocks. Broad banks can condition on the joint distribution of both shocks and, hence, achieve an efficient internal allocation of capital. This allocation involves the cross-subsidization of loans across regions or sectors. Compared to regional banks that are linked through well-functioning interbank markets, broad banks lead to higher levels of aggregate investment, higher output, and less fluctuations within regions. However, broad banks generate endogenously aggregate uncertainty.     

A comparison of cardinal tournaments and piece rate contracts with liquidity constrained agents

A celebrated result in the theory of tournaments is that relative performance evaluation (tournaments) is a superior compensation method to absolute performance evaluation (piece rate contracts) when the agents are risk-averse, the principal is risk-neutral or less risk-averse than the agents and production is subject to common shocks that are large relative to the idiosyncratic shocks. This is because tournaments get closer to the first best by filtering common uncertainty. This paper shows that, surprisingly, tournaments are superior even when agents are liquidity constrained so that transfers to them cannot fall short of a predetermined level. The rationale is that, by providing insurance against common shocks through a tournament, payments to the agents in unfavorable states increase and payments in favorable states decrease which enables the principal to satisfy tight liquidity constraints for the agents without paying any ex ante rents to them, while simultaneously providing higher-power incentives than under piece rates. The policy implication of our analysis is that firms should adopt relative performance evaluation over absolute performance evaluation regardless of whether the agents are liquidity (wealth) constrained or not.