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.     

Optimal savings with taxable and tax-deferred accounts

We solve and estimate a life-cycle model with earnings risk and liquidity constraints in the presence of tax-deferred retirement accounts (TDAs). We explicitly consider two very different types of households (with TDAs): direct and indirect stockholders. The latter hold stocks only through TDAs and, consistent with the data, save considerably less than the former, who hold stocks both inside and outside these accounts. We find that TDAs promote higher wealth accumulation but only marginally higher net savings. Consumption increases mostly during retirement, as desired, but the effect is largest for those households with higher savings rates already.     

流动性约束下机构投资者的资产配置——以保险公司为例

流动性是机构投资者资产配置必须考虑的问题之一。本文以保险公司为例,研究流动性不足对保险公司最优资产配置策略和交易策略的影响。使用遗传算法的模拟结果表明,面对流动性不足,保险公司应采取现金流匹配的交易策略以最优化其资产,即首先采用现金支付索赔;当现金资产耗尽时,在变现股票资产以尽量减少大规模销售导致的股票价格临时性和永久性波动的同时,保险公司还应多样化其资产组合,保证能够实现完全交易以减少流动性不足的影响。     

When expectations become aspirations: reference-dependent preferences and liquidity constraints

A large body of literature suggests that consumers derive utility from gains and losses relative to a reference point. This paper shows that such reference dependence can affect savings in opposite directions depending on whether people face liquidity constraints. Existing models for wealth and intertemporal choice predict that reference dependence reduces savings, but these models abstract from liquidity constraints. Introducing a liquidity constraint, I find that reference dependence can increase optimal savings for people without access to credit. Ex post, after reference points have been formed, liquidity constraints force consumers to take part of an income loss in early periods, inducing those who are reference dependent to concentrate the full loss in early periods and save in order to eliminate future losses. Further, anticipating a liquidity constraint raises the expected level of future consumption and thus the expectations-based reference point for future periods, creating an ex-ante savings motive. These findings underscore that it is important to account for financial market imperfections when applying or testing reference-dependent models in low-income settings, and potentially explain heterogeneity in how much the poor save when facing binding liquidity constraints.     

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%.     

“Interest Rate Trap”, or Why Does the Central Bank Keep the Policy Rate Too Low for Too Long?

In this paper, we provide a framework for modeling one risk‐taking channel of monetary policy, the mechanism whereby financial intermediaries' incentives for liquidity transformation are affected by the central bank's reaction to a financial crisis. The anticipation of the central bank's reaction to liquidity stress gives banks incentives to invest in excessive liquidity transformation, triggering an “interest rate trap” – the economy will remain stuck in a long‐lasting period of suboptimal, low interest rate equilibrium. We demonstrate that interest rate policy as a financial stabilizer is dynamically inconsistent, and the constrained efficient outcome can be implemented by imposing ex ante liquidity requirements.     

The tradeoff between mortgage prepayments and tax-deferred retirement savings

Many households face the tradeoff between paying an extra dollar off the remaining mortgage on their house and saving that extra dollar in tax-deferred accounts (TDAs) used for retirement. We show that, under certain conditions, it becomes a tax arbitrage to reduce mortgage prepayments and to increase TDA contributions because of the tax deductibility of mortgage interest and tax-exemption of qualified retirement savings. Using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances, we document that a significant number of households that are accelerating their mortgage payments instead of saving in TDAs forgo a profitable tax arbitrage opportunity. Finally, we show empirically that this inefficient behavior is unlikely to be driven by liquidity or other financial constraints. Rather, the observed behavior can be attributed to a certain extent to the reluctance of many households to participate in financial markets as either lenders or borrowers.     

大宗股权定价的实证检验

本文结合现有金融理论,研究大宗股权的定价问题。大宗股权的重要特征是其具有控制权收益,同时由于交易规则的限制,它往往带有流动性约束。大宗股权的这些特征是散股所不具备的,因此也将在定价中反映出来。本文将二者的影响在一个统一的框架下进行分析,并对其做了定量的估计。通过对2002和2003年间我国上市公司协议转让的233笔非流通股的研究,本文发现:流动性约束对非流通股定价有负面作用,而控制权收益对非流通股定价有正面作用。     

The Differential Returns Offered by Mutually Owned and Proprietary UK Depository Institutions: 1993–2000

The study quantifies the differences in the level of return from investing in deposit (savings) accounts provided by depository institutions, which are either 'mutual' or 'proprietary'. It is shown that for most types of deposit accounts offered in the UK, mutual building societies provide higher returns than proprietary firms. Surprisingly, it is also shown that returns from deposit accounts issued by converted or non‐mutual building societies are, generally, lower than either mutual building societies or proprietary firms. These findings are consistent for interest rate data adjusted for the effect of non‐price product characteristics and for unadjusted interest rate data.     

Hyperbolic discounting and uniform savings floors

Previous research suggests that, in partial equilibrium, individuals whose decision-making exhibits a present-bias – such as hyperbolic discounters who tend to over-consume – will be in favor of having a floor imposed on their savings. In this paper, I show it is quite difficult for the introduction of a savings floor to be Pareto improving in general equilibrium. Indeed, a necessary condition for the floor to be Pareto improving is that it is high enough to be binding for all individuals. Even in that case, because the equilibrium interest rate adjusts with the level of the savings floor, some individuals may prefer to commit to a future time path of consumption by facing a high interest rate (and no floor) rather than a high floor. An essential insight for understanding this result is to note that even those with little self-control (in an absolute sense) will choose to save a lot when the interest rate is high enough.     

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.     

Saving,Lending and Interest Rates: A Critique (of the Model) of Financial Liberalisation in India

The case for financial liberalisation is founded on the neoclassical proposition that savings causes investment and that the interest rate tends to move to equate the two. We find little support for this thesis from the experience of India. Alternatively, we suggest that the Post Keynesian approach that includes the liquidity preferences of banks might be a fruitful way to examine the dynamics of an economy in transition.     

Health Insurance, Liquidity and Growth

Within the context of an endogenous growth model, it is shown that in the presence of health risks which influence household income, the introduction of a private insurance company increases the long-term economic growth rate. The introduction of such an institution has two effects on savings: a level effect and a composition effect. Although the presence of this risk-reducing institution induces a decrease in the level of total savings, as suggested in earlier papers, the rate of illiquid savings, which contribute to growth, increases.
JEL Classification E 1; G 2; O 1; O 4     

CREDIT UNION TO MUTUAL CONVERSION: DO INTEREST RATES DIVERGE?

This study conducts a cross-sectional analysis of 175 depository institutions, assessing the impact on the interest rates charged on loan products and offered on savings products by the size of the institution, its liquidity, its net worth, its tax and salary payments, and its status as a for-profit institution, a credit union (CU), or a converted CU. We find that banks and converted CUs have interest rates significantly less favorable for consumers than CUs, suggesting that a CU converting will result in adverse interest rate movements for its customers. ( JEL 621, L3)     

Precautionary saving under liquidity constraints: evidence from Italy

I empirically investigate precautionary savings under liquidity constraints in Italy using a unique indicator of subjective variance of income growth to measure the strength of the precautionary motive for saving, and a variety of survey-based indicators of liquidity constraints. The main contribution of the paper is twofold. First of all, I attempt to differentiate between the standard precautionary saving caused by uncertainty from the one due to liquidity constraints using an endogenous switching regression approach, which allows me to cope with endogeneity issues associated with sample splitting techniques. Second, I move one step further with respect to previous studies on consumption behaviour by taking explicitly expected liquidity constraints into account. I eventually found the precautionary motive for savings to be stronger for those households who face binding constraints, or expect constraints to be binding in the future. Indeed, a complementarity relation exists between precautionary savings and liquidity constraints.     

Exchange traded funds: leverage and liquidity

This paper examines the differences between leveraged and unleveraged Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), particularly for liquidity and volatility characteristics. The impact of leverage on intraday liquidity (spread and depth) is analysed in two periods – one of normal volatility and the other of abnormal/high volatility. There is a significant difference in spread and depth of leveraged and unleveraged ETFs in periods of both normal volatility and high volatility; however, this difference is more pronounced in higher volatility periods. In high volatility periods, liquidity typically diminishes in all ETFs, and this is even more so for the leveraged ETFs. When leveraged ETFs are segregated into multiples based on their power to replicate the underlying benchmark (i.e. multiples of ?3, ?2, ?1, 2, 3), the difference in spreads between normal and high volatility periods is typically larger. The double-leveraged ETF has the most significant difference between the positive and negative counter parts. However, the relationship in the progression of the multiples does not change linearly to correspond with the level of volatility. This may be due to the nonlinear relation between volume and volatility. We shed light on the magnification effect of financial leverage on microstructure of the ETFs.     

Financial crises and liquidity shocks a bank-run perspective

In contrast with the financial multiplier literature, this note explores a case in which the shock triggering a financial crisis stems from the financial sector itself; it is not a shock stemming from the real sector which gets amplified by, say, agency problems. The basic intuition is provided by the bank-run literature of the Diamond and Dybvig (1983) variety. Financial development is modeled as a mechanism that endows real assets (e.g., land and capital) with liquidity. However, liquidity can be impaired by shocks that are equivalent to a bank run. Liquidity creation enhances real asset prices, while a liquidity crunch generates asset price collapse. This bubble-looking episode is not driven by standard fundamentals, although it is fully in line with rationality. In this context, devoid of other frictions like price stickiness, the note examines the effect of monetary policy in the absence of nominal rigidities. It shows that preventing price deflation is not enough to offset relative (to output) asset price meltdown, but lower policy interest rates increase relative asset prices and steady-state output. Moreover, in the neighborhood of a first-best capital allocation, an increase in the liquidity of capital may lower the welfare of the representative individual, even if the higher liquidity of capital is sustainable and, hence, not destroyed by future crash – illustrating the possibility of “excessive” financial innovation. An extension of the basic model supports the conjecture that low policy interest rates may have given further incentives to the development of “shadow banking.”     

Risks, Financing Constraints, and High Savings Ratio in the Rural Economy of China: A Model Incorporating Precautionary Savings and Liquidity Constraints

This paper makes an in-depth investigation on the phenomenon of high savings rate in the rural economy of China between 1978 and 2003. On the basis of precautionary savings theory, we construct a model incorporating the risks, liquidity constrains, and aging population to explain the existence of high savings rate in the rural economy of China. We measure risks with Gini coefficient and marginal propensity to save. We find that these risk indices are positively associated with the higher savings rate and the higher degree of prudence of rural households. Our findings pose an urgency of the reform of rural financial system and the improvement in social security system in the rural economy of China. Translated from Economic Science, 2005, (1) (in Chinese)     

Societal benefits of illiquid bonds

In this paper, I provide a possible explanation of why nominally risk-free bonds are essential in monetary economies. I argue that the role of nominal bonds is to enable agents to engage in intertemporal exchanges of money. I show that bonds can only serve this role if they are illiquid (costly to exchange for goods). Finally, I argue that in economies in which nominal bonds are essential, it is optimal for monetary policy to respond to changes in the distribution of liquidity needs.