Search Results
Conference Paper
Overborrowing, financial crises and ‘macro-prudential’ taxes
We study overborrowing and financial crises in an equilibrium model of business cycles and asset prices with collateral constraints. Private agents in a decentralized competitive equilibrium do not internalize the effects of their individual borrowing plans on the market price of assets at which collateral is valued and on the wage costs relevant for working capital financing. Compared with a constrained social planner who internalizes these effects, they undervalue the benefits of an increase in net worth when the constraint binds and hence they borrow "too much" ex ante. Quantitatively, ...
Conference Paper
Putting the brakes on Sudden Stops: the financial frictions - moral hazard tradeoff of asset price guarantees
The hypothesis that Sudden Stops to capital inflows in emerging economies may originate in frictions inherent to global capital markets, such as collateral constraints and trading costs, suggests that Sudden Stops could be prevented by an international organization that offers exante price guarantees on the emerging-markets asset class. Providing these guarantees is a risky endeavor, however, because they introduce a moral-hazard-like incentive similar to those that are viewed as another culprit behind emerging markets crises. This paper studies this financial frictions-moral hazard tradeoff ...
Working Paper
Putting the Brakes on Sudden Stops: The Financial Frictions-Moral Hazard Tradeoff of Asset Price Guarantees
The hypothesis that "sudden stops" to capital inflows in emerging economies may be caused by global capital market frictions, such as collateral constraints and trading costs, suggests that sudden stops could be prevented by offering price guarantees on the emerging market asset class. Providing these guarantees is a risky endeavor, however, because they introduce a moral hazard-like incentive similar to those that are also viewed as a cause of emerging markets crises. This paper studies this financial frictions-moral hazard tradeoff using an equilibrium asset-pricing model in which margin ...
Working Paper
Approximately Right?: Global v. Local Methods for Open-Economy Models with Incomplete Markets
Global and local methods are widely used in international macroeconomics to analyze incomplete-markets models. We study solutions for an endowment economy, an RBC model and a Sudden Stops model with an occasionally binding credit constraint. First-order, second-order, risky steady state and DynareOBC solutions are compared v. fixed-point-iteration global solutions in the time and frequency domains. The solutions differ in key respects, including measures of precautionary savings, cyclical moments, impulse response functions, financial premia and macro responses to credit constraints, and ...
Working Paper
On the solvency of nations: are global imbalances consistent with intertemporal budget constraints?
Theory predicts that a nation's stochastic intertemporal budget constraint is satisfied if net foreign assets (NFA) are integrated of any finite order, or if net exports (NX) and NFA satisfy an error-correction specification with a residual integrated of any finite order. We test these conditions using data for 21 industrial and 29 emerging economies for the 1970-2004 period. The results show that, despite the large global imbalances of recent years, NFA and NX positions are consistent with external solvency. Country-specific unit root tests on NFA-GDP ratios suggest that nearly all of them ...
Working Paper
Sudden stops, financial crises and leverage: a Fisherian deflation of Tobin's Q*
This paper shows that the quantitative predictions of a DSGE model with an endogenous collateral constraint are consistent with key features of the emerging markets' Sudden Stops. Business cycle dynamics produce periods of expansion during which the ratio of debt to asset values raises enough to trigger the constraint. This sets in motion a deflation of Tobin's Q driven by Irving Fisher's debt-deflation mechanism, which causes a spiraling decline in credit access and in the price and quantity of collateral assets. Output and factor allocations decline because the collateral constraint limits ...
Working Paper
Mexico's balance-of-payments crisis: a chronicle of death foretold
This paper claims that the roots of Mexico's balance-of-payments crisis are found in the prevailing high degree of capital mobility and financial globalization. Under these circumstances, shifts in foreign capital flows and anticipation of a banking-system bailout may produce large imbalances between stocks of financial assets and foreign reserves, threatening the sustainability of currency pegs. Econometric analysis suggests that 1/2 of Mexico's reserve losses could be accounted for by these phenomena. Large financial imbalances are also fertile ground for self-fulfilling-prophesy crises ...
Working Paper
Precautionary demand for foreign assets in sudden stop economies: an assessment of the new mercantilism
Financial globalization had a rocky start in emerging economies hit by Sudden Stops. Foreign reserves have grown very rapidly since then, as if those countries were practicing a New Mercantilism that views foreign reserves as a war-chest for defense against Sudden Stops. This paper conducts a quantitative assessment of this argument using a stochastic intertemporal equilibrium framework in which precautionary foreign asset demand is driven by output variability, financial globalization, and Sudden Stop risk. In this framework, credit constraints produce endogenous Sudden Stops. We find that ...
Working Paper
Terms-of-trade uncertainty and economic growth: are risk indicators significant in growth regressions?
This paper examines a neoclassical stochastic endogenous growth model in which terms-of-trade uncertainty affects savings and consumption growth. The model explains the positive link between growth and the average rate of change of terms of trade found in recent empirical studies. In addition, terms-of-trade variability, as an indicator of risk, is found to be a key determinant of growth. This implies that welfare costs of uncertainty are much larger than conventional measures of costs of consumption instability. The model's key predictions are strongly supported by results of panel ...