Essays on Uncertainty and Credit Market Frictions

Essays on Uncertainty and Credit Market Frictions PDF Author: Givi Melkadze
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
The dissertation comprises of three chapters. The first chapter studies the role of credit market frictions in transmitting time-varying aggregate uncertainty to economic activity. First, we document that changes in country-specific aggregate volatility are positively correlated with the current account dynamics but negatively correlated with investment, output and credit flows. Then we build an International Real Business Cycle model with credit market frictions that matches these empirical facts. The version of the model with no financial frictions can only account for positive correlation between volatility and current account, but implies counterfactual predictions for the other correlations. In the second chapter we analyze banking crises and lending of last resort (LOLR) in a quantitative model of financial frictions with bank defaults. We find that the LOLR, even if it induces an increase in banks' leverage, is beneficial for small open economies. We show that pools of small economies cannot be successful LOLRs for empirically reasonable levels of liquidity support: They need too many uncorrelated countries or large initial levels of reserves to be sustainable. A country with ample reserves like China can be a sustainable international LOLR. The third chapter analyzes supranational deposit insurance in a quantitative model of financial and sovereign debt crisis. We show that the common deposit insurance fund can bring about sizable economic benefits by weakening an adverse link between domestic banking sector stress and sovereign default risk. The model simulations suggest that the sustainability of such a fund requires a certain number of participating countries with strong fundamentals, while feasibility calls for risk-based insurance premiums. These results can inform the design of the common European deposit insurance fund.

Essays on Uncertainty and Credit Market Frictions

Essays on Uncertainty and Credit Market Frictions PDF Author: Givi Melkadze
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
The dissertation comprises of three chapters. The first chapter studies the role of credit market frictions in transmitting time-varying aggregate uncertainty to economic activity. First, we document that changes in country-specific aggregate volatility are positively correlated with the current account dynamics but negatively correlated with investment, output and credit flows. Then we build an International Real Business Cycle model with credit market frictions that matches these empirical facts. The version of the model with no financial frictions can only account for positive correlation between volatility and current account, but implies counterfactual predictions for the other correlations. In the second chapter we analyze banking crises and lending of last resort (LOLR) in a quantitative model of financial frictions with bank defaults. We find that the LOLR, even if it induces an increase in banks' leverage, is beneficial for small open economies. We show that pools of small economies cannot be successful LOLRs for empirically reasonable levels of liquidity support: They need too many uncorrelated countries or large initial levels of reserves to be sustainable. A country with ample reserves like China can be a sustainable international LOLR. The third chapter analyzes supranational deposit insurance in a quantitative model of financial and sovereign debt crisis. We show that the common deposit insurance fund can bring about sizable economic benefits by weakening an adverse link between domestic banking sector stress and sovereign default risk. The model simulations suggest that the sustainability of such a fund requires a certain number of participating countries with strong fundamentals, while feasibility calls for risk-based insurance premiums. These results can inform the design of the common European deposit insurance fund.

Essays on Uncertainty, Business Cycle and Search Frictions in the Credit Market

Essays on Uncertainty, Business Cycle and Search Frictions in the Credit Market PDF Author: Maja Ferjančič
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Essays on Market Frictions, Economic Shocks and Business Fluctuations

Essays on Market Frictions, Economic Shocks and Business Fluctuations PDF Author: Seungho Nah
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 129

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Book Description
Abstract: In the first essay, 'Financial Frictions, Intersectoral Adjustment Costs, and News-Driven Business Cycles', I show that an RBC model with financial frictions and intersectoral adjustment costs can generate sizable boom-bust cycles and plausible responses of stock prices in response to a news shock. Booms in the labor market, which make it possible for both consumption and investment to increase in response to positive news, are caused through two channels: the increases in value of marginal product of labor and the increases in value of collateral. Both of these channels enable firms to hire more workers. Intersectoral adjustment costs contribute to both channels by increasing the relative price of output and capital during expansions. Financial frictions enter in the forms of collateral constraints on firms, which influence the latter channel, and the financial accelerator mechanism driven by agency costs, which amplifies all the key variables. My model differs from previous studies in its ability to generate boom-bust cycles without restricting the functional form of consumption in household preferences and without requiring investment adjustment costs, variable capital utilization, or any nominal rigidities. In the second essay, 'Financial and Real Frictions as Sources of Business Fluctuations', I show that a negative shock to a financial or real friction in an economy can generate quantitatively significant and persistent recessions, even without a decrease in exogenous aggregate total factor productivity in a heterogeneous agents DSGE model. The increase in uncertainty that a firm is facing when it makes capital adjustment, however, is found to have a limited or dubious influence on economic activities. The roles of collateral constaints as a financial friction and nonconvex capital adjustment costs as a real friction in aggregate fluctuations are examined in this propagation mechanism. When these frictions become strengthened, the degree of capital misallocation is intensified, which leads to a drop of endogenous aggregate total factor productivity. As agents expect that the return to investment and endogenous TFP decrease, they reduce aggregate investment sharply, which also leads to a drop in employment. Interruption of efficient resource allocation coming from these two frictions is found out to be enough to generate a large and persistent aggregate flucutations even without introducing heterogeneity in firm-level productivity.

Credit Market Imperfections and Business Cycles

Credit Market Imperfections and Business Cycles PDF Author: Imen Ben Mohamed
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The crisis of 2009 raised the question whether the financial conditions matter for the business cycles and the propagation of shocks originating in the financial sphere. I tried to drive a fine analysis of this issue using micro-founded general equilibrium models. The modelling choice was backed by empirical motivations. In three essays, i study the impact of monetary and financial shocks on growth and labour market dynamics. First, an expansionary monetary policy eases credit conditions, raises risk tolerance and the quality of borrowers and generates a liquidity effect. The potency of the monetary policy and the size of the credit channel depend considerably on the degree of financial frictions in the credit market. Second, a restrictive monetary policy shock, an positive credit shock and a positive uncertainty shocks have similar effects on the economy: they plunge the economy in a recession, with output, job creations, and hours worked decreasing, while unemployment and job destructions increase. In all cases the interest rate spread increase, therefore indicating that financial conditions deteriorate, which is interpreted as a sign that financial frictions play a critical role in the propagation of these shocks. Third, the interaction between financial and labour market frictions does exist. The interplay between the two indeed plays a role in propagating the shocks. A shock to net worth, a credit shock and an uncertainty shock play a non-trivial role for the dynamics on the labour market.

Essays on Financial Frictions and Business Cycles

Essays on Financial Frictions and Business Cycles PDF Author: Yankun Wang
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 79

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Book Description
In this dissertation I explore the relationship between the frictions in a country's financial market and its business cycle movements. It is well known that the financial market is far from perfect, and shocks originating in such market could have sizable impact on the real economy. On the other hand, evolvement in the financial market could also be a reflection of the real economy. For example, economic downturn often leads to high borrowing cost for a country in the international financial market. The essays in this dissertation present an analysis of this two-way relationship, both qualitatively and quantitatively. The first essay studies the link between country credit spreads - defined as the difference between a home country's cost of borrowing from the international credit market and the world riskless interest rate - and the domestic business cycle fluctuations. By combining both empirical and theoretical analysis, this essay shows that deteriorating credit markets are both reflections of a declining economy and a major factor that depresses economic activity. This study uses a quarterly dataset over the period 1972Q1 to 2010Q1 for South Korea. The second essay probes the importance of financial shocks in creating business cycles in the United States. It starts from a theoretical dynamic stochastic generating equilibrium model, which identifies positive financial shocks as those that drag down the corporate net worth while raising domestic output. An empirical analysis later uses this property to identify financial shocks and study their importance in creating business cycle movement for the U.S. in the past fifty years. This property is in stark contrast to technological shocks, which raise both corporate net worth and total output.

Three Essays on Banking Frictions, Uncertainty and Business Cycles

Three Essays on Banking Frictions, Uncertainty and Business Cycles PDF Author: Byoung Ho Bae
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
Abstracts: This dissertation studies the role of financial frictions and uncertainty on business cycles in the context of a DSGE (Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium) model. In the first chapter, I study the role of the banking sector on business cycles, mainly by focusing on the friction that arises from a bank's portfolio adjustment. Based on empirical evidence, I construct a DSGE model with a banking sector, in which banks adjust the composition of their asset portfolios in response to the economic environment. The quantitative experiment shows that the credit supply-side friction arising from a bank's time-varying portfolio adjustment generates an amplification mechanism and leads to a deeper credit crunch. Furthermore, an economy with an inefficient financial system that requires higher intermediation costs creates a higher level of credit supply-side frictions and that, in turn, leads to the amplification effect of business cycles. The second chapter studies the role of bank capital requirements on business cycles. To this end, I develop a DSGE model with financial frictions arising from moral hazard problems as in Holmstrom and Tirole (1997) together with regulatory capital requirements on the banking sector. I find that financial deepening as measured by a decrease of a financial intermediary's monitoring costs could contribute to mitigating business cycle fluctuations. In addition, this study finds that imposing and increasing capital requirements on the banking sector could lead to a decrease in bank lending, thereby amplifying business cycles. The third chapter studies the effect of uncertainty shocks on the housing market with collateral constraints under a DSGE framework. The quantitative experiment shows that with a standard calibration, increasing volatility in structural shock processes negatively affects housing prices and investment, and that leads to a decrease in output. I also find that higher leverage with a large loan-to-value parameter in collateral constraints amplifies business cycles under uncertainty shocks. In addition, a monetary policy experiment shows that flexible monetary policy with a lower interest smoothing parameter helps to mitigate the fluctuation caused by uncertainty shocks.

Essays on Markets and Institutions in Emerging Economies

Essays on Markets and Institutions in Emerging Economies PDF Author: TAREK FOUAD GHANI
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 124

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Book Description
Market frictions pervade emerging economies and constrain private sector development. In such settings, formal institutions to help address contract enforcement, property rights and information asymmetries are typically weak or absent. Instead, market participants must rely on informal practices and institutions to mitigate uncertainty, instability and opportunism. For example, personalized exchange relationships are useful when contract enforcement is weak, and cash holdings can be attractive when financial institutions are unreliable. In three specific emerging economy settings, I explore how informal practices and institutions interact with formal market development, and in particular the role that market frictions play in determining outcomes for firms, technologies and employees. The first chapter of this dissertation explores how changes in formal upstream market structure affect the economics of downstream relationships using original data from the ice industry in Sierra Leone. In this setting, a monopoly ice manufacturer sells through independent retailers to fishermen buyers. I demonstrate that a shock that increases upstream competition among manufacturers improves the contractual terms offered by retailers to buyers. Under the monopoly manufacturer, late deliveries are common due to outside demand shocks. To help mitigate this uncertainty, retailers prioritize loyal customers when faced with shortages, and buyers respond by rarely switching retailers. When manufacturers compete, prices fall, quantities increase and services improve with fewer late deliveries. Entry upstream also disrupts collusion among retailers by increasing the value of competing for buyer relationships. Competing retailers expand trade credit provision as a new basis for loyalty, and stable buyer relationships reemerge after a period of intense switching. The findings suggest that market structure shapes informal contractual institutions, and that competition can reconstitute the nature of relationships. The second chapter addresses the relationship between violence and financial decisions in Afghanistan. In particular, I investigate how violence affects the tradeoff between informal cash holdings - which are liquid but insecure - and usage of a more secure but less liquid formal financial account. Using three separate data sources, I find that individuals experiencing violence retain more cash and are less likely to adopt and use mobile money, a new financial technology. First, combining detailed information on the entire universe of mobile money transactions in Afghanistan with administrative records for all violent incidents recorded by international forces, I find a negative relationship between violence and mobile money use. Second, in the context of a randomized control trial, violence is associated with decreased mobile money use and greater cash balances. Third, in financial survey data from nineteen of Afghanistan's 34 provinces, I find that individuals experiencing violence hold more cash. Collectively, the evidence indicates that individuals experiencing violence prefer cash to mobile money. More speculatively, it appears that this is principally because of concerns about future violence. These results emphasize the difficulty of creating robust financial networks in conflict settings. Finally, in the third chapter, I study how informal behaviors interact with incentives to affect employees' decisions to formally save in the context of a large firm in Afghanistan. I analyze a mobile phone-based account that allows savings to be automatically deducted from salaries. Employees who are automatically enrolled in this defined-contribution account are 40 percentage points more likely to contribute than individuals with a default contribution of zero. Analyzing randomly assigned employer matching contributions, I find that the effect of automatic enrollment on participation is approximately equivalent to providing financial incentives equal to a 50 percent match. To understand why default enrollment increases participation, some employees are randomly offered an immediate financial consultation, and others a financial consultation in one week. Employees are more likely to discuss changing their savings contributions in one week, suggesting that defaults raise contributions because of the perceived complexity of financial decisions, and because employees procrastinate in developing a financial plan for the future.

Essays on Informational Frictions in Macroeconomics and Finance

Essays on Informational Frictions in Macroeconomics and Finance PDF Author: Jennifer La'O
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
This dissertation consists of four chapters analyzing the effects of heterogeneous and asymmetric information in macroeconomic and financial settings, with an emphasis on short-run fluctuations. Within these chapters, I study the implications these informational frictions may have for the behavior of firms and financial institutions over the business cycle and during crises episodes. The first chapter examines how collateral constraints on firm-level investment introduce a powerful two-way feedback between the financial market and the real economy. On one hand, real economic activity forms the basis for asset dividends. On the other hand, asset prices affect collateral value, which in turn determines the ability of firms to invest. In this chapter I show how this two-way feedback can generate significant expectations-driven fluctuations in asset prices and macroeconomic outcomes when information is dispersed. In particular, I study the implications of this two-way feedback within a micro-founded business-cycle economy in which agents are imperfectly, and heterogeneously, informed about the underlying economic fundamentals. I then show how tighter collateral constraints mitigate the impact of productivity shocks on equilibrium output and asset prices, but amplify the impact of "noise", by which I mean common errors in expectations. Noise can thus be an important source of asset-price volatility and business-cycle fluctuations when collateral constraints are tight. The second chapter is based on joint work with George-Marios Angeletos. In this chapter we investigate a real-business-cycle economy that features dispersed information about underlying aggregate productivity shocks, taste shocks, and-potentially-shocks to monopoly power. We show how the dispersion of information can (i) contribute to significant inertia in the response of macroeconomic outcomes to such shocks; (ii) induce a negative short-run response of employment to productivity shocks; (iii) imply that productivity shocks explain only a small fraction of high-frequency fluctuations; (iv) contribute to significant noise in the business cycle; (v) formalize a certain type of demand shocks within an RBC economy; and (vi) generate cyclical variation in observed Solow residuals and labor wedges. Importantly, none of these properties requires significant uncertainty about the underlying fundamentals: they rest on the heterogeneity of information and the strength of trade linkages in the economy, not the level of uncertainty. Finally, none of these properties are symptoms of inefficiency: apart from undoing monopoly distortions or providing the agents with more information, no policy intervention can improve upon the equilibrium allocations. The third chapter is also based on joint work with George-Marios Angeletos. This chapter investigates how incomplete information affects the response of prices to nominal shocks. Our baseline model is a variant of the Calvo model in which firms observe the underlying nominal shocks with noise. In this model, the response of prices is pinned down by three parameters: the precision of available information about the nominal shock; the frequency of price adjustment; and the degree of strategic complementarity in pricing decisions. This result synthesizes the broader lessons of the pertinent literature. However, this synthesis provides only a partial view of the role of incomplete information: once one allows for more general information structures than those used in previous work, one cannot quantify the degree of price inertia without additional information about the dynamics of higher-order beliefs, or of the agents' forecasts of inflation. We highlight this with three extensions of our baseline model, all of which break the tight connection between the precision of information and higher-order beliefs featured in previous work. Finally, the fourth chapter studies how predatory trading affects the ability of banks and large trading institutions to raise capital in times of temporary financial distress in an environment in which traders are asymmetrically informed about each others' balance sheets. Predatory trading is a strategy in which a trader can profit by trading against another trader's position, driving an otherwise solvent but distressed trader into insolvency. The predator, however, must be sufficiently informed of the distressed trader's balance sheet in order to exploit this position. I find that when a distressed trader is more informed than other traders about his own balances, searching for extra capital from lenders can become a signal of financial need, thereby opening the door for predatory trading and possible insolvency. Thus, a trader who would otherwise seek to recapitalize is reluctant to search for extra capital in the presence of potential predators. Predatory trading may therefore make it exceedingly difficult for banks and financial institutions to raise credit in times of temporary financial distress.

Risk, Uncertainty and Profit

Risk, Uncertainty and Profit PDF Author: Frank H. Knight
Publisher: Cosimo, Inc.
ISBN: 1602060053
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
A timeless classic of economic theory that remains fascinating and pertinent today, this is Frank Knight's famous explanation of why perfect competition cannot eliminate profits, the important differences between "risk" and "uncertainty," and the vital role of the entrepreneur in profitmaking. Based on Knight's PhD dissertation, this 1921 work, balancing theory with fact to come to stunning insights, is a distinct pleasure to read. FRANK H. KNIGHT (1885-1972) is considered by some the greatest American scholar of economics of the 20th century. An economics professor at the University of Chicago from 1927 until 1955, he was one of the founders of the Chicago school of economics, which influenced Milton Friedman and George Stigler.

Macroeconomics and the Financial System

Macroeconomics and the Financial System PDF Author: N. Gregory Mankiw
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1429253673
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 642

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Book Description
Watch this video interview with Greg Mankiw and Larry Ball discussing the future of the intermediate macroeconomics course and their new text. Check out preview content for Macroeconomics and the Financial System here. The financial crisis and subsequent economic downturn of 2008 and 2009 was a dramatic reminder of what economists have long understood: developments in the overall economy and developments in the financial system are inextricably intertwined. Derived and updated from two widely acclaimed textbooks (Greg Mankiw’s Macroeconomics, Seventh Edition and Larry Ball’s Money, Banking, and the Financial System), this groundbreaking text is the first and only intermediate macroeconomics text that provides substantial coverage of the financial system.