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Journal Article
Does Fiscal Stimulus Work when Recessions Are Caused by Too Much Private Debt?
We argue that fiscal stimulus funded by public debt is effective for increasing economic activity and employment even in recessions that are caused by overborrowing in the private sector. We analyze the impact of government spending on local economies between 2007 and 2009 and find evidence that the fiscal multiplier is higher in geographical areas characterized by higher individual household debt. The higher multiplier in those areas might be attributed to a direct increase in both household consumption and local economic slack.
Working Paper
Stress Tests and Small Business Lending
Post-crisis stress tests have altered banks? credit supply to small business. Banks affected by stress tests reduce credit supply and raise interest rates on small business loans. Banks price the implied increase in capital requirements from stress tests where they have local knowledge, and exit markets where they do not, as quantities fall most in markets where stress-tested banks do not own branches near borrowers, and prices rise mainly where they do. These reductions in supply are concentrated among risky borrowers. Stress tests do not, however, reduce aggregate credit. Small banks ...
Working Paper
Fiscal Stimulus and Consumer Debt
In the aftermath of consumer debt-induced recession, policymakers have questioned whether fiscal stimulus is effective during the periods of high consumer indebtedness. This study empirically investigates this question. Using detailed data on Department of Defense spending for the 2006-2009 period, we document that the open-economy relative fiscal multiplier is higher in geographies with higher consumer indebtedness. The results suggest that fiscal policy can mitigate the adverse effect of consumer (over)leverage on real economic output during a recession. We then exploit detailed microdata ...
Working Paper
Mortgage companies and regulatory arbitrage
Mortgage companies (MCs) originated about 60% of all mortgages before the 2007 crisis and continue to hold a 30% market share postcrisis. While financial regulations are strictly enforced for depository institutions (banks), they are weakly enforced for MCs even if they are subsidiaries of a bank holding company (BHC). This study documents that the resulting regulatory arbitrage creates incentives for BHCs to engage in risk shifting through their MC affiliates. We show that MCs are established to circumvent the capital requirements and to shield the parent BHCs from loan-related losses. BHCs ...
Conference Paper
The role of securitization in bank financial management
This paper studies the effect of securitization on bank lending. I propose a new index of ?securitizability of a bank portfolio? that can be thought of as a weighted average of the potential to securitize loans of a given type, where the weights reflect the composition of a bank loan portfolio. I use this new index to show that securitization makes bank lending less sensitive to cost of fund shocks because it provides banks with an additional source of funding. Securitization thus weakens the link from monetary policy to bank lending activity. Furthermore, by allowing banks to convert ...
Journal Article
A Gap in Regulation and the Looser Lending Standards that Followed
New research highlights how disparities in the regulatory treatment of banks and shadow banking organizations before the fi nancial crisis allowed heavily-regulated bank holding companies to lend through their less-regulated subsidiaries. Doing so helped them to conserve their regulatory capital, avoid recognizing costly loan losses, and pursue riskier lending while still adhering to banking regulations.