Explaining changes in the US credit card market: Lenders are using more information

We examine two changes in the cross-sectional distribution of credit card contracts over time: the increasing variance in interest rates and the increasing variance in credit limits, using data from the 1989–2013 Survey of Consumer Finances. Within this dataset, we show that financial institutions seem to be collecting and using more consumer information when extending credit. We then develop a life-cycle model of lending using a novel contract structure reflecting modern credit cards, where interest rates and credit limits are jointly determined before actual borrowing takes place. Within the model, giving lenders more information on consumers generates realistic results along several dimensions. More information leads to better pricing, moving the market from a ‘pooling’ to a ‘separating’ equilibrium, generating the observed increase in variances, with the gains primarily going to young agents.     

How index investment impacts commodities: A story about the financialization of agricultural commodities

This paper focuses on the impact of financial investors on agricultural prices, a phenomenon known as the financialization. In this aim, we check whether financial mechanisms drive extreme values and the mean of agricultural returns in the same way. Relying on the Threshold AutoRegressive Quantile (TQAR) methodology, we find evidence of reinforcement linkages between equity and agricultural markets since 2004, corresponding to the rise in inflows of institutional investors in commodity markets. These results show that agents impact more deeply commodity markets when the commodity index value is high. In addition, in extreme quantiles (0.75 and 0.90) of agricultural returns, the relationship between agricultural and stock returns is always significant when the commodity index return is in the higher regime. This finding suggests that, stock markets had a greater impact on agricultural price dynamics during the extreme movements which occurred during the 2007–2008 financial crisis, highlighting a potential influence of financial markets on the financialization of commodities.     

Liquidity and Twin Crises

This paper proposes a simple analytical framework for understanding 'twin crises'– i.e. crises where a currency crisis and banking crisis occur simultaneously and reinforce each other. The distinguishing feature of such crises is the spill‐over effects across financial institutions through collateral constraints, declines in market values of assets, currency mismatches on the balance sheet and the endogenous amplification of financial distress through asset sales. We explore the role of liquidity and the role of monetary policy in such crises. In particular, a central question is whether raising interest rates in the face of a twin crisis is the appropriate policy response. Raising interest rates has two countervailing effects. Holding the domestic currency becomes more attractive (other things being equal), but the value of the domestic banking system falls due to the fall in asset prices. When assets are marked to market, there is a potential for endogenously generated financial distress that leads to a collapse of asset prices, as well as the exchange rate. It is thus possible that raising interest rates can have the perverse effect of exacerbating both the currency crisis and the banking crisis.     

Asset prices in a Huggett economy

This paper explores asset pricing in economies where there is no direct insurance against idiosyncratic risks but other assets can be used for self-insurance, subject to exogenously-imposed borrowing limits. We analyze an endowment economy, based on Huggett (1993) [11], both with and without aggregate risk. Our main innovation is that we obtain full analytical tractability by studying the case with “maximally tight” borrowing constraints. We illustrate by looking at riskless bonds, equity, and the term structure of interest rates, and we show that the model can reproduce many features of observed asset prices when idiosyncratic risks are quantitatively reasonable.     

Early warning system of finance stress for India

This paper develops a composite Financial Sector Stress Index (FSSI) for the Indian financial system as a whole by combining three sub-indices for currency markets, the banking sector and the stock market, to gauge the level of financial stress in the Indian financial system. Such a continuous-valued index can be used to track the varying magnitude and dynamics of financial stress in the country over time. The FSSI provides an ordinal measure of stress in the financial system. Changes in the FSSI are useful in assessing whether financial stress is rising or falling, and in ascertaining extreme events in the financial system. The paper, then, objectively identifies extreme stress periods in the financial system based on movements of the index. We recognise that such extreme/tail events pose special econometric challenges as they are rare events but with a big impact. Hence, we use a more robust and analytically sound technique of Extreme Value Theory (EVT) to identify extreme events in the financial system. Once the extreme stress events are identified, we use a binary dependent variable model (logit model) to estimate the impact of various macroeconomic and financial variables on the probability of extreme stress in the financial system.     

On the detection of extreme movements and persistent behaviour in Mediterranean stock markets: a wavelet-based approach

We combine the global Hurst exponent and Morlet wavelet multi-resolution analysis (MRA) to investigate the dynamic behaviour of six selected stock markets in the Mediterranean region. Specifically, we employ the resonance coefficients and their power spectra to identify potential extreme movements and long-term dependence in stock returns. Using weekly data for the period 2005 to 2010, our results reveal that the wavelet MRA is able to reconstruct the effects of major extreme shocks on stock returns of studied markets, such as the Asian financial crisis, the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the 2007–2009 financial crisis. Moreover, the wavelet-based global Hurst exponent indicates the presence of long-term dependencies in stock returns of all the considered markets, except for France where the anti-persistent behaviour is detected. Overall, our findings are useful to assess the stock market efficiency and provide new insights into stock market dynamics over different time scales.     

收入不平等与家庭借贷行为*——家庭为追求社会地位而借贷的动机真的存在吗

本文利用中国家庭金融调查(CHFS)2011年度的调查数据,考察了收入不平等对家庭借贷行为的影响,并验证了家庭是否存在为追求社会地位而借贷的动机。研究表明：（1）收入不平等并不是影响家庭是否借贷的主要因素,但是对家庭的负债规模存在十分显著的抑制作用;（2）收入不平等的扩大并不会促使中低收入家庭寻求借贷或提升家庭负债规模,我国家庭并不存在为了追求更高的社会地位而进行借贷的动机;（3）收入不平等的扩大有利于高收入家庭获得更多的正规金融借贷,中低收入家庭则会较多地依赖于非正规金融借贷;（4）户主的人口统计学特征、家庭经济特征以及家庭所处地区特征均是影响家庭借贷行为的重要因素,在正规金融和非正规金融市场上,影响家庭借贷行为的因素存在较明显的差异。     

The eurozone financial crisis: debt,credit ratings and monetary and fiscal policy

This paper discusses the eurozone financial crisis. It argues that it was largely the result of a common monetary policy not being suitable for individual countries which led to excessive private and public borrowing and a debt crisis. Neither borrowing rates nor credit ratings anticipated the crisis. Fundamental changes to eurozone governance are being proposed. The paper examines whether instead there might be a market solution if financial markets priced risk better. Accordingly, a more timely way of obtaining credit ratings is shown.     

Liquidity shocks and equilibrium liquidity premia

We study an equilibrium in which agents face surprise liquidity shocks and invest in liquid and illiquid riskless assets. The random holding horizon from liquidity shocks makes the return of the illiquid security risky. The equilibrium premium for such risk depends on the constraint that agents face when borrowing against future income; it is insignificant without borrowing constraint, but can be very high with borrowing constraint. Illiquidity, therefore, can have large effects on asset returns when agents face liquidity shocks and borrowing constraints. This result can help us understand why some securities have high liquidity premia, despite low turnover frequency.     

The puzzling dual of the uncovered interest parity puzzle evidence from Pacific Rim capital flows

International financial arbitrage should prevent the existence of non-zero expected returns when borrowing in one currency and lending in another implying that interest differentials should predict exchange rate movements. The failure of interest differentials to act as an unbiased predictor of future exchange rate movements is referred to as the uncovered interest parity puzzle. This paper explores whether capital flows respond to these interest differentials in the context of a model in which dynamic adjustment costs keep capital from flowing immediately across borders. The paper finds little or even a negative relationship between expected excess returns on exchange rate adjusted U.S. money market rates (relative to domestic interest rates) and capital flows to the U.S. from Australia, Canada, Japan or Korea.     

财富不平等会抑制金融素养对家庭借贷行为的作用效果吗*——基于CHFS数据的经验分析

本文基于2013年中国家庭金融调查（CHFS）数据,选用工具变量法,考察了金融素养对城乡家庭借贷行为影响的差异性,并验证了财富不平等扩大会抑制金融素养对家庭借贷行为的影响。研究发现：（1）金融素养是影响家庭借贷行为的重要因素。户主金融素养水平的改善显著提高了家庭发生借贷的概率与家庭借贷规模。（2）金融素养对城乡家庭借贷行为的影响存在明显差异,金融素养的提高对信贷约束较为严重的农村家庭借贷行为的促进作用更大。（3）财富不平等对家庭借贷行为存在明显的抑制作用,财富不平等的扩大减少了家庭借贷需求,降低了家庭发生借贷的概率和家庭负债规模。（4）随着家庭财富不平等程度的扩大,金融素养对家庭借贷行为的促进作用受到抑制。基于以上结论,政府应该大力开展消费者金融素养教育,注重家庭收入分配合理性,从而推动我国消费金融市场的健康发展。     

Mini flash crashes: Review,taxonomy and policy responses

We focus on extreme price movements known as mini flash crashes (MFCs). After reviewing the literature, we provide a taxonomy based on a sample of MFCs identified by Nanex on the U.S. financial markets over a three-year period. We detect significant differences between crashes and exchanges. In comparison to ‘up crashes’, we find that ‘down crashes’ exhibit lower absolute returns but have longer duration. We also show that the dynamics of MCFs varies across exchanges. For example, the MFCs on ARCA are on average both less severe and shorter in duration than those on the NASDAQ. We finally review all the key implications of MCFs in terms of public policy.     

The Perverse Effect of Debt Tax Benefits on Firm Investment Decisions

In this paper we question the idea that the deduction of debt interest is always an effective policy instrument to spur firm investment. We analyse the investment decision in presence of a borrowing constraint on the amount of debt that the firm can raise. We show that if the debt interest rate is decreasing in the firm's capital accumulation and another financial resource more expensive than debt is available (at least for levels of debt lower than the upper bound), then the deduction of the debt interest from taxes on capital income may reduce firm investment. This theoretical result is relevant for economic policy decisions when financial intermediaries are not willing to finance beyond a certain threshold but firms have access to other sources of finance.     

Misallocation and financial market frictions: Some direct evidence from the dispersion in borrowing costs

Financial frictions distort the allocation of resources among productive units—all else equal, firms whose financing choices are affected by such frictions face higher borrowing costs than firms with ready access to capital markets. As a result, input choices may differ systematically across firms in ways that are unrelated to their productive efficiency. We propose an accounting framework that allows us to assess empirically the magnitude of the loss in aggregate resources due to such misallocation. To a second-order approximation, the framework requires only information on the dispersion in borrowing costs across firms, which we measure—for a subset of U.S. manufacturing firms—directly from the interest rate spreads on their outstanding publicly-traded debt. Given the observed dispersion in borrowing costs, our approximation method implies a relatively modest loss in efficiency due to resource misallocation—on the order of 1 to 2 percent of measured total factor productivity (TFP). In our framework, the correlation between firm size and borrowing costs has no bearing on TFP losses under the assumption that financial distortions and firm-level efficiency are jointly log-normally distributed. To take into account the effect of covariation between firm size and borrowing costs, we consider a more general framework, which dispenses with the assumption of log-normality and which implies somewhat higher estimates of the resource losses—about 3.5 percent of measured TFP. Counterfactual experiments indicate that dispersion in borrowing costs must be an order of magnitude higher than that observed in the U.S. financial data, in order for misallocation—arising from financial distortions—to account for a significant fraction of measured TFP differentials across countries.     

Hyperbolic Discounting,Borrowing Aversion and Debt Holding

Analysis of an original Internet‐based survey reveals that debt holding is related to time discounting through: (i) present bias, measured by the degree of declining impatience in the generalized hyperbolic discount function; (ii) borrowing aversion, captured by a sign effect in that future losses are discounted at lower rates than future gains; and (iii) impatience, measured by the overall discount rate. Hyperbolic respondents are classified naïve if their answers reveal them to be time‐inconsistent procrastinators, and otherwise sophisticated. Naïve respondents with more steeply declining impatience are more likely to be debtors. The sign effect relates negatively to borrowing. Survey responses indicative of high or declining impatience are associated with credit card borrowing and other overborrowing indicators.     

Asymmetric quantile analysis of the Swedish mortgage price discovery process

Based on Swedish banking data we discover robust and significantly positive Asymmetric Price Transmission (APT) effects over all analysed regression quantiles of our mortgage interest rates, with even larger positive APT for the higher percentiles. The analysis was enabled through unique access to a Swedish bank's (SEB) own records of their true borrowing costs. Our central contribution is that there is a higher propensity for the bank to rapidly increase its mortgage interest rates for customers following an increase in its borrowing costs, compared with the propensity for the bank to decrease its customers’ mortgage rates subsequent to a corresponding borrowing cost decrease.     

Entrepreneurship, windfall gains and financial constraints: Evidence from Germany

We investigate the link between the propensity to become an entrepreneur and the exogenous release from financial constraints in Germany. This is defined in terms of the movement from employment to self-employment on receipt of a financial windfall. A theoretical framework developing Evans and Jovanovic (1989) is set up and tested with panel data from German households. The results show that financial constraints do exist given that individuals are more likely to start a personal business after receiving a windfall gain. The value of windfall gains has a significant but non linear effect on the decision to become self employed. The data reveal that differences in ability and income affect the change in employment status. We also report that there is no evidence that becoming self-employed involves the anticipation of windfall gains.     

Financial frictions and the futures pricing puzzle

In perfect capital markets, the futures price of an asset should be an unbiased forecast of its realized spot price when the contract matures. In reality, futures prices are often higher for some assets and lower for others. However, there is no stability in the relationship between futures prices and the realized spot prices. This instability has been a puzzle in the existing financial literature. The key to this puzzle may lie in the nature of the model and the lack of market imperfections. In this study, we take a theoretical approach in a dynamic multi-period environment. We incorporate competition between disparate economic agents and impose financial frictions (i.e., imperfections) that are in the form of hedging and borrowing limits on them. Our model gives rise to multiple equilibria, each with unique market clearing prices, with the market switching between these equilibria. Our analysis incorporates a comprehensive consideration of the risks faced by the futures markets participants (i.e., speculators and hedgers) and leads to a better understanding of the puzzle.     

COMOVEMENTS OF DIFFERENT ASSET CLASSES DURING MARKET STRESS

This paper measures US financial asset class linkages (stocks, bonds, T‐bills and gold) during crisis periods. We use extreme value analysis to assess the bivariate exposure of one asset class to extreme movements in the other asset classes. These bivariate co‐crash probabilities can be interpreted as a measure of financial contagion. Statistical testing reveals that bivariate extreme linkage estimates exhibit time variation for certain asset pairs, possibly caused by exogenous factors like oil shocks or shifts in monetary policy. Our results have potentially important implications for long‐run strategic asset allocation and pension fund management.     

Quantitative properties of sovereign default models: Solution methods matter

We study the sovereign default model that has been used to account for the cyclical behavior of interest rates in emerging market economies. This model is often solved using the discrete state space technique with evenly spaced grid points. We show that this method necessitates a large number of grid points to avoid generating spurious interest rate movements. This makes the discrete state technique significantly more inefficient than using Chebyshev polynomials or cubic spline interpolation to approximate the value functions. We show that the inefficiency of the discrete state space technique is more severe for parameterizations that feature a high sensitivity of the bond price to the borrowing level for the borrowing levels that are observed more frequently in the simulations. In addition, we find that the efficiency of the discrete state space technique can be greatly improved by (i) finding the equilibrium as the limit of the equilibrium of the finite-horizon version of the model, instead of iterating separately on the value and bond price functions and (ii) concentrating grid points in asset levels at which the bond price is more sensitive to the borrowing level and in levels that are observed more often in the model simulations. Our analysis is also relevant for the study of other credit markets.