From Wall Street to Main Street: The Impact of the Financial Crisis on Consumer Credit Supply

How did the collapse of the asset‐backed securities (ABS) market during the 2007 to 2009 financial crisis affect the supply of credit to the broader economy? Using new data on the U.S. credit union industry, we find that ABS‐related losses are associated with a large contraction in the supply of credit to consumers, especially among those credit unions that began the crisis with weaker capitalization. We also find that this credit supply shock restricted the availability of mortgage and automobile credit. These results show how movements in the prices of financial assets can affect the real economy.     

Effect of a Class Action Suit on Consumer Repurchase Intentions

This study examines willingness to repurchase a Toyota among 335 Toyota owners, 246 who had participated in a class action suit against Toyota and 89 who had not participated. It also examines attitudes toward auto dealers and manufacturers and includes a psychographic measure of global consumer loyalty. Respondents were interviewed one to two years after participants had received a cash settlement to compensate for illegal overcharging. Multivariate analysis indicates that compared to nonparticipants, settlement participants, especially those satisfied with the settlement, were more willing to repurchase a Toyota and were less positive in their attitudes toward the Toyota manufacturer. Positive attitudes toward the Toyota manufacturer and dealers were associated with higher repurchase willingness, while positive attitudes toward other dealers and manufacturers were associated with lower repurchase willingness. Consumer loyalty was associated with higher repurchase willingness. These findings and their implications are discussed in terms of several theoretical frameworks.     

Information Immobility and the Home Bias Puzzle

Many argue that home bias arises because home investors can predict home asset payoffs more accurately than foreigners can. But why does global information access not eliminate this asymmetry? We model investors, endowed with a small home information advantage, who choose what information to learn before they invest. Surprisingly, even when home investors can learn what foreigners know, they choose not to: Investors profit more from knowing information others do not know. Learning amplifies information asymmetry. The model matches patterns of local and industry bias, foreign investments, portfolio outperformance, and asset prices. Finally, we propose new avenues for empirical research.     

Delayed Adjustment and Persistence in Macroeconomic Models

Estimated impulse responses of investment and hiring typically peak well after the impact of a shock. Standard models with adjustment costs in capital and labor do not exhibit such delayed adjustment, but we argue that it arises naturally when we relax the assumption that the production technology is separable over time. This result, which holds for both convex and nonconvex cost functions, is strong enough to match the persistence observed in the data for reasonable parameter values. We discuss some evidence for our explanation and ways to test it.     

Calibrating the Magnitude of the Countercyclical Capital Buffer Using Market-Based Stress Tests

This paper proposes a novel methodology to calibrate the magnitude of the countercyclical capital buffer (CCyB) using market-based stress tests. The macroprudential authority in our paper aims to contain the possibility of a breach of a minimum capital ratio in the event of a severe system-wide shock within a certain permissible failure probability. We apply the methodology by stress-testing major banks in six advanced economies on a quarterly basis over a period of 27 years. The estimates suggest that the cap on the CCyB should not be less than around 1.7% of total assets. Its potential normal-times level is estimated at approximately 0.8% of total assets.     

A Theory of Intrinsic Inflation Persistence

We propose a novel theory of intrinsic inflation persistence by introducing trend inflation and Kimball (1995)-type aggregators of individual differentiated goods and labor in a model with staggered price- and wage-setting. Under nonzero trend inflation, the non-CES (constant elasticity of substitution) aggregator of goods and staggered price-setting give rise to a variable real marginal cost of goods aggregation, which becomes a driver of inflation. This marginal cost consists of an aggregate of the goods' relative prices, which depends on past inflation, thereby generating intrinsic inertia in inflation. Likewise, the non-CES aggregator of labor and staggered wage-setting lead to intrinsic inertia in wage inflation, which enhances the persistence of price inflation. With the theory we show that inflation exhibits a persistent, hump-shaped response to monetary policy shocks. We also demonstrate that lower trend inflation reduces inflation persistence and that a credible disinflation leads to a gradual decline in inflation and a fall in output.     

Firm-Level Climate Change Exposure

We develop a method that identifies the attention paid by earnings call participants to firms' climate change exposures. The method adapts a machine learning keyword discovery algorithm and captures exposures related to opportunity, physical, and regulatory shocks associated with climate change. The measures are available for more than 10,000 firms from 34 countries between 2002 and 2020. We show that the measures are useful in predicting important real outcomes related to the net-zero transition, in particular, job creation in disruptive green technologies and green patenting, and that they contain information that is priced in options and equity markets.