Credit Frictions Research Articles

Financial shocks, comovement and credit frictions

In models with frictional financial markets, the specification of the borrowing constraint is crucial to generating comovement between macro variables and asset prices after credit shocks. The interaction between financial frictions and labor demand is key to the results.

Credit Frictions and the Cleansing Effect of Recessions.

Recessions are conventionally considered as times when the least productive firms are driven out of the market. How do credit frictions affect this cleansing effect of recessions? We build and calibrate a model of firm dynamics with credit frictions and endogenous entry and exit to investigate this question. We find that there is a cleansing effect of recessions in the presence of credit frictions, despite their effect on the selection of exiting and entering firms. This result holds true regardless of the nature of the recession: average firm-level productivity rises following a negative aggregate productivity shock, as well as following a negative financial shock. The intensity of the cleansing effect of recessions is however lower in the presence of credit frictions, especially when the recession is driven by a financial shock.

Expectations, Stagnation and Fiscal Policy

Stagnation as the new norm and fiscal policy are examined in a New Keynesian model with adaptive learning determining expectations. We impose inflation and consumption lower bounds, which can be relevant when agents are pessimistic. The inflation target is locally stable under learning. Pessimistic initial expectations may sink the economy into steady-state stagnation with deflation. The deflation rate can be near zero for discount factors near one or if credit frictions are present. Following a severe pessimistic expectations shock a large temporary fiscal stimulus is needed to avoid or emerge from stagnation. A modest stimulus is sufficient if implemented early.

Financial Development and Inequality in the Global Economy

We build a heterogeneous-firms model with firm-specific wages and credit frictions to study the role of financial development for inequality in the global economy. If there are many small firms, better access to external funds reduces wage inequality and unemployment. In contrast, if there are many highproductive firms (those that export), financial development may have opposite effects - especially if trade costs are low. In sum, the implications of financial development for inequality depend on the size distribution of firms and on the costs of exporting. Trade liberalization, however, raises inequality unambiguously.

Trade, Finance and Endogenous Firms Heterogeneity

We study how financial frictions affect firm-level heterogeneity and trade. We build a model where productivity differences across monopolistically competitive firms are endogenous and depend on investment decisions at the entry stage. By increasing entry costs, financial frictions lower the exit cutoff and hence the value of investing in bigger projects with more dispersed outcomes. As a result, credit frictions make firms smaller and more homogeneous, and hinder the volume of exports. Export opportunities, instead, shift expected profits to the tail and increase the value of technological heterogeneity. We test these predictions using comparable measures of sales dispersion within 365 manufacturing industries in 119 countries, built from highly disaggregated US import data. Consistent with the model, financial development increases sales dispersion, especially in more financially vulnerable industries; sales dispersion is also increasing in measures of comparative advantage. These results can be important for explaining the effect of financial development and factor endowments on export sales.

Taxation, credit constraints and the informal economy

Abstract This paper extends Evans and Jovanovic (1989)'s entrepreneurship model to incorporate the informal sector. Specifically, entrepreneurs can operate either in the formal sector – in which they have limited access to credit markets and must pay taxes – or in the informal sector – in which they can avoid paying taxes, but have no access to credit markets. In addition, technology in the informal sector is both less productive and more labor intensive than that in the formal sector. We calibrate the model to the Brazilian economy, and evaluate the impact of credit frictions and taxation on occupational choices, aggregate output and inequality. Removing all distortions can improve aggregate efficiency considerably, largely because this induces entrepreneurs to switch to the formal sector, where the technology is superior. Most of this effect comes from removing credit market frictions, but taxes on formal businesses are also important. The elimination of distortions can also reduce income inequality substantially.

Credit frictions and optimal monetary policy

Credit frictions and optimal monetary policy

Inequality, Financial Frictions, and Leveraged Bubbles

We analyze collateralizable rational asset bubbles in an overlapping generations model with credit frictions. We show that an increase in the pledgeability of assets (or “easy credit”) relaxes the conditions for the existence of endogenously leveraged bubbles. With low pledgeability, bubble investment is unleveraged, as the bubbly asset simply serves as an investment vehicle for savers. However, with high pledgeability, bubble investment becomes leveraged, as credit-constrained borrowers find it optimal to buy the bubbly asset using collateralized loans. Furthermore, the collapse of leveraged bubbles leads to equilibrium default. The model predicts a relationship between boom-busts in asset prices and collateralized credit that is broadly consistent with documented characteristics of the recent financial crisis. Finally, we provide an open economy application, which illustrates the relevance of our theory for understanding how the global savings glut might have facilitated the leveraged housing bubble episode in the U.S.

Asset Measurement in Imperfect Credit Markets

ABSTRACTHow should a firm measure a productive asset used as collateral? To answer this question, we develop a model in which firms borrow funds subject to collateral constraints. We characterize the qualities of optimal asset measurements and analyze their interactions with financing needs, collateral constraints, and interest rates. Because of real effects, complete transparency would reduce contracting efficiency and, hence, the measurement must be suitably adapted to credit conditions. The optimal measurement is asymmetric and reports precise information about high collateral values if credit frictions are low, but the reverse if credit frictions are high. Tighter credit market conditions may lead to more opaque measurements and increased investment, in the form of inefficient continuations.

Banking union in a single currency area: evidence on financial fragmentation

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of the impact of the single currency on the institutional design of the banking union, through evidence on the financial integration process.Design/methodology/approach– Data analysis uses multiple sources of data on key drivers of financial fragmentation. The paper starts from a snapshot the status of financial integration and then identifies the main components of this trend.Findings– Evidence shows that financial integration in the euro area between 2010 and 2014 retrenched at a quicker pace than outside the monetary union. Home bias persisted. Under market pressures, governments compete on funding costs by supporting “their” banks with massive state aids, which distorts the playing field and feed the risk-aversion loop. This situation intensifies frictions in credit markets, thus hampering the transmission of monetary policies and, potentially, economic growth. Taking stock of developments in the euro area, this paper discusses the theoretical framework of a banking union in a single currency area with decentralised fiscal policy sovereignty. It concludes that, when a crisis looms over, a common fiscal backstop can reduce pressures of financial fragmentation, driven by governments’ moral hazard and banks’ home bias.Research limitations/implications– Additional research is required to deepen the empirical analysis, with econometric modelling, on the links between governments’ implicit guarantees and banks’ home bias. This is an initial data analysis.Originality/value– Under market pressure, governments in a single currency area tend to be overprotective (more than countries with full monetary sovereignty) towards their own banking system and so trigger financial fragmentation (enhancing banks’ home bias). To revert that, a common fiscal backstop is an essential element of the institutional design. The paper shows empirical evidence and theory, as well as it identifies underlying market failures. It links the single currency to the institutional design of a banking union. This important dimension is brought into a coherent framework.

OPTIMAL MONETARY POLICY AND IMPERFECT FINANCIAL MARKETS: A CASE FOR NEGATIVE NOMINAL INTEREST RATES?

AbstractThis article studies optimal monetary policy in a model with credit frictions and money demand. We show that augmenting a standard New Keynesian model with money demand and financial frictions generates a mechanism that, in equilibrium, gives rise to optimal negative nominal interest rates. In addition, we find that the tighter credit markets are, the lower the optimal nominal policy interest rate and the more likely it is to be negative. Quantitatively, when credit constraints are binding, a standard calibration of the model generates an optimal nominal policy interest rate that is roughly −4% annually. (JEL E31, E41, E43, E44, E52, E58)

Monetary Policy, Hot Housing Markets and Leverage

Expansionary monetary policy can increase household leverage by stimulating housing liquidity. Low mortgage rates encourage buyers to enter the housing market, raising the speed at which properties can be sold. Because lenders can resell seized foreclosure inventory at lower cost in such a hot housing market, ex-ante they are comfortable financing a larger fraction of the house purchase. Consistent with this mechanism, this study documents empirically that both the housing sales rate and loan-to-value ratios increase after expansionary monetary policy. Calibrating a New Keynesian macroeconomic model to fit the response of housing liquidity to monetary policy, the interaction between credit frictions and housing market search frictions generates endogenous movements in the loan-to-value ratio which amplify the economy's response to monetary policy.

Understanding global crises: an emerging paradigm

Financial crises have some common storylines, among them bursting asset bubbles, bank failures, sharp tightening of credit, and downturn in trade. They are also different from one another. Some start with sudden reversal of international capital flows, others with domestic credit implosions. A challenge to economic research is to integrate common as well as disparate threads into a coherent analytical framework that is at the same time empirically testable. In Understanding Global Crises, Assaf Razin offers a review of an emerging paradigm that is consistent with the key features of recent global financial crises. This paradigm presents in a transparent way basic analytical elements of the theories of financial and monetary crises and how these elements fit together in macroeconomic analysis of global crises. Razin surveys the credit implosion that led to a severe banking crisis in Japan in the 1990s, the Asian financial crisis that began in 1997, the global meltdown of 2008, and the Euro-zone crisis. He reviews the analytics of financial fragilities, credit frictions, currency crises, and balance of payments crises, and addresses international capital flows with information frictions. He then presents key developments in the New Keynesian analytical framework by examining the surge of re-modeling efforts aimed at the development of an analytical framework to underpin monetary and fiscal policy in the post-2008 economic era.

Endogenous growth and wealth inequality under incomplete markets and idiosyncratic risk

This paper describes the equilibrium properties and dynamics of a model which combines the key features of the standard incomplete market model (Aiyagari, 1994) with a standard endogenous growth mechanism to gain a deeper understanding of the feedback effects between growth and wealth inequality in the presence of credit frictions and idiosyncratic risk. We characterize growth equilibria and find that a balanced growth path not necessarily exists if households are subject to ad hoc borrowing constraints. Growth, inequality, and risk are positively related in our model, but we also identify a hump-shaped relationship between welfare and risk, indicating a tradeoff relationship between risk-pooling and growth in the determination of welfare. The growth rate responds to changes in the wealth distribution and displays transitional dynamics towards the balanced growth path.

Optimal Monetary Policy and Imperfect Financial Markets: A Case for Negative Nominal Interest Rates?

This article studies optimal monetary policy in a model with credit frictions and money demand. We show that augmenting a standard New Keynesian model with money demand and financial frictions generates a mechanism that, in equilibrium, gives rise to optimal negative nominal interest rates. In addition, we find that the tighter credit markets are, the lower the optimal nominal policy interest rate and the more likely it is to be negative. Quantitatively, when credit constraints are binding, a standard calibration of the model generates an optimal nominal policy interest rate that is roughly −4% annually.

Asset Measurement with Imperfect Credit Markets

How should a firm measure a productive asset used as collateral in a credit agreement? To answer this question, we develop a model in which firms borrow funds subject to collateral constraints. We characterize the qualities of optimal asset measurements and analyze their interactions with financing needs, collateral constraints and interest rates. Because of real effects, complete transparency would reduce contracting efficiency and, hence, the measurement must be suitably adapted to credit conditions. The optimal measurement is asymmetric and reports precise information about high collateral values if credit frictions are low, but the reverse if credit frictions are high. Tighter credit market conditions may lead to more opaque measurements and increased investment, in the form of inefficient continuations.

Monetary Policy, Hot Housing Markets and Leverage

Expansionary monetary policy can increase household leverage by stimulating housing liquidity. Low mortgage rates encourage buyers to enter the housing market, raising the speed at which properties can be sold. Because lenders can resell seized foreclosure inventory at lower cost in such a hot housing market, ex-ante they are comfortable financing a larger fraction of the house purchase. Consistent with this mechanism, this study documents empirically that both the housing sales rate and loan-to-value ratios increase after expansionary monetary policy. Calibrating a New Keynesian macroeconomic model to fit the response of housing liquidity to monetary policy, the interaction between credit frictions and housing market search frictions generates endogenous movements in the loan-to-value ratio which amplify the economy's response to monetary policy.

Matching and Credit Frictions in the Housing Market (Asuntomarkkinoiden Etsinttkitka Ja Luottorajoitteet)

​We study the interaction of matching and credit frictions in the housing market. In the model, risk-averse households may save or borrow in order to smooth consumption over time and finance owner housing. Prospective sellers and buyers meet randomly and bargain over the price. We analyze how borrowing constraints influence house price determination in the presence of matching frictions. We also show that credit frictions greatly magnify the effects of matching frictions. For instance, in the presence of matching frictions, a moderate tightening of the borrowing constraint increases idiosyncratic price dispersion and the average time-on-the-market substantially.

Monetary Policy, Hot Housing Markets and Leverage

Expansionary monetary policy can increase household leverage by stimulating housing liquidity. Low mortgage rates encourage buyers to enter the housing market, raising the speed at which properties can be sold. Because lenders can resell seized foreclosure inventory at lower cost in such a hot housing market, ex-ante they are comfortable financing a larger fraction of the house purchase. Consistent with this mechanism, this study documents empirically that both the housing sales rate and loan-to-value ratios increase after expansionary monetary policy. Calibrating a New Keynesian macroeconomic model to _t the response of housing liquidity to monetary policy, the interaction between credit frictions and housing market search frictions generates endogenous movements in the loan-to-value ratio which amplify the economy's response to monetary policy.

Financial crises and exchange rate policy

This paper studies exchange rate policy in a small open economy model featuring an occasionally binding collateral constraint and Fisherian deflation. The goal is to evaluate the performance of alternative exchange rate policies in sudden stop-prone economies. The key element of the analysis is a pecuniary externality arising from frictions in the international credit markets, which creates a trade-off between price and financial stability. The main result is that depreciating the exchange rate during a financial crisis has a positive impact on welfare, because the stimulus provided by a depreciation sustains asset prices, value of collateral, and access to the international credit markets.