Asymmetric Price Movements and Borrowing Constraints: A Rational Expectations Equilibrium Model of Crises, Contagion, and Confusion

This study proposes a rational expectations equilibrium model of crises and contagion in an economy with information asymmetry and borrowing constraints. Consistent with empirical observations, the model finds: (1) Crises can be caused by small shocks to fundamentals; (2) market return distributions are asymmetric; and (3) correlations among asset returns tend to increase during crashes. The model also predicts: (1) Crises and contagion are likely to occur after small shocks in the intermediate price region; (2) the skewness of asset price distributions increases with information asymmetry and borrowing constraints; and (3) crises can spread through investor borrowing constraints.     

Commitment, banks and markets

We examine how banks and financial markets interact with one another to provide liquidity to investors. The critical assumption is that financial markets are characterized by limited enforcement of contracts, and in the event of default only a fraction of borrowers’ assets can be seized. Limited enforcement reduces the fraction of assets that can be used as collateral and thus individuals subject to liquidity shocks face borrowing constraints. We show how banks endogenously overcome these borrowing constraints by pooling resources across several depositors, and increase the liquidity provided by financial markets.     

External constraints and endogenous growth: Why didn't some countries benefit from capital flows?

Empirical evidence on the growth benefits of capital inflows is mixed. The growth benefits accruing from capital inflows also appear to be larger for high savings countries. We explain this phenomenon using an OLG model of endogenous growth in open economies with borrowing constraints that can generate both positive and negative growth effects of capital inflows. The amount an economy can borrow is restricted by an endogenous enforcement constraint. In our setting, with physical capital and a pay-as-you-go pensions system, the steady state is unique. However, it can either be constrained or unconstrained. In a constrained economy, opening up to equity and FDI inflows can be bad for growth because it makes the domestic interest rate too low, which endogenously tightens borrowing constraints. Agents decrease savings and investment in productivity-enhancing activities resulting in lower growth. Results are reversed in an unconstrained economy. We also provide a quantitative analysis of these constraints and some policy implications.     

Intangible capital,relative asset shortages and bubbles

Purely technological factors can be a fundamental force behind the emergence of asset price bubbles in developed economies. We analyze an economy in which the production technology utilizes both physical and intangible capital, where the latter cannot be used as collateral for borrowing. Technological change, in the form of increased importance of intangible capital in production, sharpens the borrowing constraints of entrepreneurs, leading to a scarcity of high-yield assets relative to low-yield ones. This can create the conditions for asset bubbles. Additionally, due to the financial frictions, standard dynamic efficiency tests are not valid, and bubbles are not Pareto improving.     

ON THE CAPITAL STRUCTURE OF NON‐PROFIT ORGANISATIONS: A REPLICATION AND EXTENSION WITH BELGIAN DATA

The empirical tests of non‐profit organisations' capital structure theories by Jegers and Verschueren (2006) on a sample of Californian non‐profit organisations (data on 1999) are replicated and extended for a more recent Belgian sample (844 observations pertaining to 2007). Three complementary theories to explain the presence and levels of overall debt and financial debt are examined: equity constraints, agency, and borrowing constraints. The decision to borrow and the amount to be borrowed are analysed separately. The estimations obtained reveal that both are driven by different mechanisms. After having removed outliers, the results show effective equity constraints when explaining debt levels, as observed in the Californian sample with respect to the overall amount of debt. The results also indicate an agency explanation of debt: both the decision to borrow from financial institutions, and the overall amount of (financial) debt are positively affected by the presence of a potential agency gap between board and management. In the Californian sample, the results on this were mixed. Borrowing constraints were almost never discovered, similar to the conclusions reached by Jegers and Verschueren. However, slightly reducing the sample by removing outliers makes borrowing constraints apparent. As to the control variables, size positively affects the probability of borrowing, but, for the organisations taking on debt, negatively affects the level of borrowing. As could be expected, the amount of tangible fixed assets in place is positively related to the amount of financial debt.     

Bank profitability,leverage constraints,and risk-taking

Traditional theory suggests that higher bank profitability (or franchise value) dissuades bank risk-taking. We highlight an opposite effect: higher profitability loosens bank borrowing constraints. This enables profitable banks to take risk on a larger scale, inducing risk-taking. This effect is more pronounced when bank leverage constraints are looser, or when new investments can be financed with senior funding (such as repos). The model’s predictions are consistent with some notable cross-sectional patterns of bank risk-taking in the run-up to the 2008 crisis.     

Credit Traps and Macroprudential Leverage

We construct a macroeconomic model with overlapping generations to study credit traps—prolonged periods of stagnant real activity accompanied by low productivity, financial sector undercapitalization, and credit misallocation. Shocks to bank capital tighten banks' borrowing constraints causing them to allocate credit to easily collateralizable but low productivity projects. Low productivity weakens bank capital generation, reinforcing tight borrowing constraints, sustaining the credit trap steady state. Macroprudential policy to limit bank leverage can be welfare enhancing. In the presence of a credit trap, optimal leverage policy is countercyclical.     

Borrowing Constraints,Home Ownership and Housing Choice: Evidence from Intra‐Family Wealth Transfers

We study the impact of borrowing constraints on home ownership and housing demand by comparing the tenure choice and housing quality of consumers who receive intra‐family wealth transfers to those that do not. Our analysis is based on household‐level panel data providing information on the receipt of wealth transfers, changes in tenure status as well as changes in the size and quality of housing. On average we find that the receipt of a wealth transfer increases the propensity of consumers to transition from renters to home‐owners by 6–8 percentage points (35% of the sample mean). Additional analyses suggest that this effect is unlikely to be driven by wealth effects and can thus be attributed to the relaxation of borrowing constraints. By contrast, wealth transfers do not increase the likelihood that existing homeowners “trade‐up” to larger homes in better locations.     

Disequilibrium in the UK corporate loan market

In the last decade, a debate has resurfaced about whether financial constraints stemming from asymmetric information and incentive problems play an important role in propagating monetary policy shocks. This paper investigates the monetary transmission mechanism in the UK and its impact on the availability of bank credit to small and medium size firms.The empirical specification is based on a disequilibrium model that allows for the possibility of transitory credit rationing. Sample firms are classified endogenously into ‘borrowing constrained’ and ‘borrowing unconstrained’. The analysis of credit rationing takes into account not only firm specific variables, but also important macroeconomic factors such as the prevailing monetary conditions and the stage of the business cycle.We find that (i) firms’ assets play an important role as collateral in mitigating borrowing constraints; (ii) during periods of tight monetary conditions corporate demand for bank credit increases, whereas the supply of bank loans is reduced; (iii) to avoid bank credit rationing smaller companies increase their reliance on interfirm credit; (iv) the proportion of borrowing constrained firms is significantly higher during the recession years of the early 1990s than at other times.     

The intended and unintended consequences of financial-market regulations: A general-equilibrium analysis

In a production economy with trade in financial markets motivated by the desire to share labor-income risk and to speculate, we show that speculation increases volatility of asset returns and investment growth, increases the equity risk premium, and reduces welfare. Regulatory measures, such as constraints on stock positions, borrowing constraints, and the Tobin tax have similar effects on financial and macroeconomic variables. However, borrowing constraints and the Tobin tax are more successful than constraints on stock positions at improving welfare because they substantially reduce speculative trading without impairing excessively risk-sharing trades.     

Optimal portfolio choice and the valuation of illiquid securities

Traditional models of portfolio choice assume that investorscan continuously trade unlimited amounts of securities. In reality,investors face liquidity constraints. I analyze a model whereinvestors are restricted to trading strategies that are of boundedvariation. An investor facing this type of illiquidity behavesvery differently from an unconstrained investor. A liquidity-constrainedinvestor endogenously acts as if facing borrowing and short-sellingconstraints, and one may take riskier positions than in liquidmarkets. I solve for the shadow cost of illiquidity and showthat large price discounts can be sustained in a rational model.     

Credit Crunches from Occasionally Binding Bank Borrowing Constraints

We present a model in which banks and other financial intermediaries face both occasionally binding borrowing constraints, and costs of equity issuance. Near the steady state, these intermediaries can raise equity finance at no cost through retained earnings. However, even moderately large shocks cause their borrowing constraints to bind, leading to contractions in credit offered to firms, and requiring the intermediaries to raise further funds by paying the cost to issue equity. This leads to the occasional sharp increases in interest spreads and the countercyclical, positively skewed equity issuance that are characteristics of the credit crunches observed in the data.     

Asset pricing with heterogeneous preferences,beliefs, and portfolio constraints

Portfolio constraints are widespread and have significant effects on asset prices. This paper studies the effects of constraints in a dynamic economy populated by investors with different risk aversions and beliefs about the rate of economic growth. The paper provides a comparison of various constraints and conditions under which these constraints help match certain empirical facts about asset prices. Under these conditions, borrowing and short-sale constraints decrease stock return volatilities, whereas limited stock market participation constraints amplify them. Moreover, borrowing constraints generate spikes in interest rates and volatilities and have stronger effects on asset prices than short-sale constraints.     

Are Banks Still Special When There Is a Secondary Market for Loans?

Secondary market trading in loans elicits a significant positive stock price response by a borrowing firm's equity investors. We find the major reason for this response is the alleviation of borrowing firms’ financial constraints. We also find that new loan announcements are associated with a positive stock price effect even when prior loans made to the same borrower already trade on the secondary market. We conclude that the special role of banks has changed due to their ability to create an active secondary loan market while simultaneously maintaining their traditional role as information producers.     

State-ownership and financial constraints on investment of Chinese-listed firms: new evidence

We examine how state-ownership affects financial constraints on investment of Chinese-listed firms during 1999–2008. We find that although an average sample firm experiences some degree of financial constraints, state-ownership does not necessarily help in reducing the firm's financial constraints on investment. Further evidence shows that state-ownership does not lead to more borrowing from the Chinese banking sector, implying that state-ownership does not necessarily reduce the firm's financial constraints via the state-controlled banking sector. We consider not only the standard factors in the investment equation, but also the firm's equity financing behaviour explicitly. The result is robust to both the conventional proxy for financial constraints, i.e. the investment–cash-flow sensitivity, and a recently developed proxy for financial constraints, i.e. the KZ index. Our results suggest that China's corporatisation movement is effective in that soft budget constraints once enjoyed by former state-owned enterprises have been removed along with the progress of corporatisation. These firms, although still state-involved, can be seen as modern corporations operating in a market environment.     

A simple asset pricing model with heterogeneous agents,uninsurable labor income and limited stock market participation

In this paper we study a simple two-period asset pricing model to understand the implications of uninsurable labor income risk and/or borrowing constraints, limited stock market participation, heterogeneous labor income volatilities, and heterogeneous preferences. We appraise the performance of each of these in matching moments of asset returns to the data and show that limited stock market participation generates a significantly large equity premium. We also show that the distribution of wealth between stock market participants and non-participants plays an important role in asset pricing, and that the effect of borrowing constraints on asset returns are similar to that of limited participation. Finally, we discuss the practical implications of our investigation, providing an appraisal of ongoing changes in asset returns.     

Bailouts in a Federation

The recent move towards decentralization in countries such as Spain, Hungary, and South Africa and the difficulties that central governments have had in dealing with fiscal irresponsibility on the part of regional governments in countries such as Argentina, Brazil, and India has made the study of transfer systems one of the most important areas of research in federalism today. A model of a federation is developed in which regional governments act as Nash competitors with each other but are first-movers in a Stackelberg game with the central government. The central government finds that it will maximize its expected votes by increasing transfers as regions borrow. This bail out of regional governments creates a regional soft budget constraint and results in two incentive effects, a common pool effect on tax payments and an opportunity cost effect. The soft budget constraint lowers the opportunity cost of borrowing for the region, but also increases the tax-cost since a portion of the borrowing must be paid for through increased taxes. The common property problem associated with tax payments implies that the increased tax cost must be less than the decrease in the opportunity cost (leading to excessive borrowing) unless the central government increases grants to other regions when it institutes a bailout. Somewhat surprisingly, in the latter case the additional increased taxes may increase costs enough to offset the lower opportunity cost resulting from the bailout, leading to efficient borrowing decisions as in the case of a hard budget constraint. The results are also useful for understanding the empirical estimation of soft budget constraints.     

The association of departures from spending rate equilibrium to municipal borrowing cost

The U.S. municipal bond market has grown dramatically in recent decades. Debt financing has become a more important source of capital for municipalities, yet research into the association of fiscal management and borrowing cost has not been directly addressed since before GASB's formation in 1984. We attempt to fill this void and contribute to the dialog concerning municipal managerial competence and its association with borrowing cost by studying a sample of 3285 county general obligation bonds over a 13-year period. We resolve conflicting and counterintuitive results in prior work and demonstrate that the lowest borrowing cost is achieved where general fund revenues equal general fund expenditures (i.e., equilibrium spending rate). Further, we find that the association between spending rate and borrowing cost is nonmonotonic, nonlinear, and asymmetric. We demonstrate that maintenance of a spending rate equilibrium point may be a way of achieving minimum borrowing cost. In the context of fiscal constraints and the increased reliance on credit markets by municipalities, managing to the spending rate equilibrium may reduce the borrowing costs of providing municipal services.