Aggregate implications of micro asset market segmentation

An extensive empirical literature finds that micro asset markets are segmented from one another. We develop a consumption-based asset pricing model to quantify the aggregate implications of a financial system comprised of many such segmented micro asset markets. We specify exogenously the level of segmentation that determines how much idiosyncratic risk traders bear in their micro market and calibrate the segmentation to match facts about systematic and idiosyncratic return volatility. In our benchmark model traders bear 30% of their idiosyncratic risk, the unconditional aggregate equity premium is 2.4% annual, and the welfare costs of segmentation are substantial, 1.8% of lifetime consumption.     

Crises and liquidity in over-the-counter markets

We study the efficiency of liquidity provision by dealers and the desirability of policy intervention in over-the-counter (OTC) markets during crises. We emphasizes two OTC frictions: finding counterparties takes time, and trade is bilateral and involves bargaining. We model a crisis as a shock that reduces investors? asset demands, lasting until a random recovery time. In this context, dealers can provide liquidity to investors by accumulating asset inventories. When OTC frictions are severe, even well capitalized dealers may not find it privately optimal to accumulate inventories, and direct purchase by the government can improve welfare.     

Learning from private and public observations of othersʼ actions

We study the diffusion of dispersed private information in a large economy, where agents learn from the actions of others through two channels: a public channel, such as equilibrium market prices, and a private channel, for example local interactions. We show that, when agents learn only from the public channel, an initial release of public information increases agents? total knowledge at all times and increases welfare. When a private learning channel is present, this result is reversed: more initial public information reduces agents asymptotic knowledge by an amount in order of $\log (t)$ units of precision. When agents are sufficiently patient, this reduces welfare.     

The OECD's new global model

This paper provides a summary of the OECD's new global macroeconometric model, including an overview of model structure and a selection of simulations illustrating its main properties. Compared with its predecessors, the new model is more compact and regionally aggregated, but gives more weight to the focus of policy interests in global trade and financial linkages. The country model structures typically combine short-term Keynesian-type dynamics with a consistent long-run neo-classical supply-side. While retaining a conventional treatment of international trade and payments linkages, the model has a greater degree of stock-flow consistency, with explicit modelling of domestic and international assets, liabilities and associated income streams. Account is also taken of the influence of financial and housing market developments on asset valuation and domestic expenditures via house and equity prices, interest rates and exchange rates. As a result, the model gives more prominence to wealth and wealth effects in determining longer-term outcomes and the role of asset prices in the transmission of international shocks both to goods and financial markets.     

Exchange rate puzzles and distorted beliefs

We propose a new explanation for the foreign exchange forward-premium and delayed-overshooting puzzles. We show that both puzzles arise from a systematic distortion in investors' beliefs about the interest rate process. Accordingly, the forward premium is always a biased predictor of future depreciation; the bias can be so severe as to lead to negative coefficients in the ‘Fama’ regression. Delayed overshooting may or may not occur depending upon the persistence of interest rate innovations and the degree of misperception. We document empirically the extent of this distortion using survey data for G-7 countries against the U.S. and find that it is strong enough to account for these irregularities.     

Liquidity premia in dynamic bargaining markets

This paper develops a search-theoretic model of the cross-sectional distribution of asset returns, abstracting from risk premia and focusing exclusively on liquidity. In contrast with much of the transaction-cost literature, it is not assumed that different assets carry different exogenously specified trading costs. Instead, different expected returns, due to liquidity, are explained by the cross-sectional variation in tradeable shares. The qualitative predictions of the model are consistent with much of the empirical evidence.