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Working Paper
A Static Capital Buffer is Hard To Beat
In a model with endogenous risk-taking, deposit insurance and limited liability may lead banks to make risky loans that are socially inefficient. Capital requirements can prevent excessive risk-taking at the cost of reducing liquidity-producing bank deposits. A policy that sets capital requirements just high enough to prevent excessive risktaking will move capital requirements pro-, counter-, or a-cyclically depending on the shock source. However, such a policy requires full knowledge of all the shocks hitting the economy and is not implementable. Simple rules that respond to cyclical ...
Working Paper
Optimal Dynamic Capital Requirements and Implementable Capital Buffer Rules
We build a quantitatively relevant macroeconomic model with endogenous risk-taking. In our model, deposit insurance and limited liability can lead banks to make risky loans that are socially inefficient. This excessive risk-taking can be triggered by aggregate or sectoral shocks that reduce the return on safer loans. Excessive risk-taking can be avoided by raising bank capital requirements, but unnecessarily tight requirements lower welfare by limiting liquidity producing bank deposits. Consequently, optimal capital requirements are dynamic (or state contingent). We provide examples in which ...
Working Paper
Two essays on monetary policy in an interdependent world
Working Paper
A new interpretation of the coordination problem and its empirical significance
In this paper, we discuss a new interpretation of what might be meant by the "coordination" of policies; in this interpretation, the policymakers are selecting a noncooperative solution rather than a cooperative solution. The new interpretation is suggested by the fact that games typically have a large number of Nash solutions, and players are not indifferent as to which occurs. The multiplicity of solutions may be due to information sharing and surveillance, the choice of policy instruments, or the adoption of reputational strategies in repeated versions of the game. The "coordination" ...