Endogenous Borrowing Constraints Research Articles

Endogenous Credit, Business Cycle, and Portfolio Selection

News story for “Endogenous Credit, Limited Commitment, Business Cycle” Countercyclical Investment Patterns with Endogenously Determined Credit Anticipated returns are sufficiently high to offset the elevated risks during downturns, presenting favorable investment opportunities. For instance, Warren Buffett accumulated more than $10 billion in profits amidst the 2008 financial crisis, as highlighted in his Wall Street Journal interview from October 2013: “In terms of simple profitability, an average investor could have performed just as well investing in the stock market if they bought during the panic period.” In “Endogenous Credit, Limited Commitment, Business Cycle,” Choi, Koo, Lim, and Yoo reveal a divergence in investment behavior between affluent and less affluent individuals during economic downturns. Whereas wealthier individuals tend to increase their exposure to risky investments, less affluent individuals tend to reduce theirs. We employ rigorous modeling and solution analysis to establish endogenous borrowing constraints in general equilibrium, elucidating the observed investment patterns.

Optimal Policy for Macrofinancial Stability

There is a new and now large literature analyzing government policies for financial stability based on models with endogenous borrowing constraints. These normative analyses build upon the concept of constrained efficient allocation where the social planner is constrained by the same borrowing limit that agents face. In this paper, we show that there exists at least one set of tools implementing the constrained efficient allocation that can also be used by a Ramsey planner to replicate an unconstrained allocation, achieving higher welfare. Constrained efficiency may lead to inaccurate characterizations of welfare maximizing policies relative to Ramsey optimal policy. (JEL E32, E44, E61, G01, H21)

Sovereign debt, fiscal policy, and macroeconomic instability

We study the relation between capital accumulation, fiscal policy, and sovereign debt dynamics in a small open economy. The government maximizes spending, facing borrowing constraints and a conditionality requirement. Debt dynamics are forward looking, being driven by the endogenous borrowing constraint. Current debt is determined by expectations about the government's ability to finance itself in the future, opening the room for indeterminacy. If the government believes it may issue more debt next period, the borrowing constraint relaxes, and current debt increases. The government invests more in productive activities, generating a boom which increases tax revenues. However, as this increase does not repay the additional debt, the government will issue more debt next period, confirming initial expectations. To exclude explosive trajectories, tax revenues must increase enough to repay the outstanding debt and reduce future debt emission. This is possible only with a sufficiently procyclical tax rate. In this case, if productive externalities are large enough, the economy exhibits local and global indeterminacy, as steady-state multiplicity is also obtained. Avoiding sufficiently procyclical tax rates, the government can prevent local and global fluctuations driven by self-fulfilling volatile expectations. This differs from the general wisdom that procyclical tax rates should be used for stabilization.

Housing choices and their implications for consumption heterogeneity

This paper proposes a model to jointly explain two stylized facts observed in the recent empirical literature—the existence of a significant size of wealthy hand-to-mouth consumers and negative marginal propensities to consume associated with housing upgrades. The key ingredients of the model are a realistic set of housing choices, sizable down payment requirements, transaction costs, and endogenous borrowing constraints. Moreover, in the presence of unanticipated income shocks, this richness in marginal propensities to consume has significant implications for aggregate consumption and helps explain the puzzling increase in savings by low net worth households observed during the Great Recession as well as the consumption responses to recent tax rebates.

Banking Access and Racial Inequality: Wealth and Human Capital Accumulation of Young Men

There are large racial differences in access to the financial system among young adults. Lack of access to savings and investment opportunities results in low financial returns on savings. Low returns, in turn, reduce ex-ante incentives to save, work, and invest in human capital. Using a structural model of schooling, labor supply, and savings with unequal financial access and endogenous borrowing constraints, I quantify the effects of racial differences in financial access and labor market discrimination on the observed racial wealth gap. Counterfactual policy experiments suggest that a financial inclusion policy that provides full access increases African American youths’ median net worth level and reduces racial wealth inequality. In comparison, a college tuition reduction policy is less effective in reducing wealth inequality.

UNSECURED CREDIT, PRODUCT VARIETY, AND UNEMPLOYMENT DYNAMICS

Revolving credit is the prime determinant of short-run household liquidity and comoves positively with product variety and negatively with unemployment. I develop a theory of feedback between revolving credit and product development and examine its ability to explain labor market volatility. Extending the Mortensen–Pissarides model with an endogenous borrowing constraint and free entry of monopolistically competitive firms reproduces stylized facts in the data and amplifies both productivity and financial shocks through mutual causality. Higher debt limits encourage firm entry and raise product variety (the entry channel), and greater variety makes default more costly and thereby raises the equilibrium debt level (the consumption value channel). Though productivity shocks are sufficient to generate higher volatility, financial shocks are essential in approximating the time series patterns of unemployment, vacancies, and revolving credit in the data, and reproduce the rise in unemployment during the Great Recession.

Dynamic effects of consumption tax reforms with durable consumption

Abstract This paper introduces durables into a dynamic general equilibrium overlapping generation model with idiosyncratic income shocks and endogenous borrowing constraints, which depend on durables. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the welfare effects of consumption tax reforms in a richer model that captures the difference between nondurable and durable consumption. When durables are considered, the standard results that a shift to consumption taxes is welfare improving are overturned. The mechanism of this opposing result is that consumption tax makes durable consumption more expensive without relaxing the borrowing constraint. The inability of borrowing to insure against income risk deviates the economy further away from market completeness and particularly hurts young and poor households. As a result, welfare decreases, coupled with negative redistribution.

Time Inconsistency and Endogenous Borrowing Constraints

This paper studies the welfare of time-inconsistent, partially sophisticated agents living under two different regimes, one with complete, unfettered credit markets (CM) and the other with endogenous borrowing constraints (EBC) where the borrowing limits are set to make agents indifferent between defaulting and paying back their unsecured loans. The CM regime cannot deliver the first best because partially sophisticated agents would undo plans laid out by previous selves and borrow too much. Somewhat counterintuitively, in some cases, the EBC regime may deliver higher welfare than the CM regime. These results speak to the academic debate surrounding the creation and functioning of the CFPB (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) in the U.S. and its implementation of the ability-to-repay rule on lenders after the 2007-8 crisis. Such institutions generate commitment publicly and may help time inconsistent agents economize on the costs of private commitment provision.

Endogenous borrowing constraints and stagnation in Latin America

The Latin American debt crisis of the 1980’s had a major and long-lasting effect on per-capita consumption: its level in 2005 was not that different from that in 1980. This paper studies the long stagnation in per-capita consumption that followed the crisis, and its relationship with recessions and sovereign risk, using a small open economy real business cycle model with complete markets, endogenous borrowing limits (limited commitment), endogenous capital accumulation, and domestic productivity and international interest rate shocks. I find that the model does an excellent job at explaining the observed behavior of per-capita consumption and that both the productivity and international interest rate shocks are important. Furthermore, I show that the participation constraint in this kind of representative agent model can bind not only in good times but also in prolonged bad times.

On endogenous formation of price expectations

We study a two-period exchange economy with complete financial markets and endogenous borrowing constraints. Contrary to perfect foresight paradigm, we assume that agents are heterogeneous in their ability to forecast future prices. We introduce a new equilibrium concept, called informationally constrained equilibrium, where the formation of price expectations is endogenous and reflects the revelation of information from observing bounds on liabilities designed to ensure solvency at any contingency. We prove that, under standard assumptions, an equilibrium always exists and we characterize the degree of information revealed by the endogenous debt limits.

On the Efficiency of Mandatory Retirement Savings Under Endogenous Borrowing Constraints

Mandatory contributions to retirement savings accounts may tighten existing borrowing constraints, forcing individuals to forgo profitable investment options. This welfare-detrimental effect can be offset if retirement savings are allowed to serve as collateral. Moreover, some credit market imperfections may disappear altogether if this later policy is combined with a pension system with unconditional basic savings.

A Macroeconomic Model of Bank Runs

We present a dynamic general equilibrium model of bank runs where global games are utilized as the equilibrium selection criterion. Coordination failures among bank creditors lead to panic-based runs. An endogenous borrowing constraint emerges as banks internalize the impact of their leverage decisions on the run probability. Our analyses suggest that runs triggered by panics impose a significant cost on the aggregate economy while those driven solely by fundamentals have almost negligible impacts. We highlight the quantitative importance of equilibrium selection criteria for our counterfactual results.

Growth Model with Financial Deepening and Productivity Heterogeneity

This paper studies the effects of financial deepening on growth dynamics and productivity in an economy where heterogeneous entrepreneurs face endogenous borrowing constraints. Quantitative results from a calibrated model suggest that 38% of Japan’s total factor productivity from 1961 to 1991 can be explained by the financial deepening effects and the convergence speed is 29% slower than that implied by neoclassical models. The present paper also theoretically shows that an economy with a higher degree of productivity heterogeneity is more likely to avoid the poverty trap and converge with a slower speed to its steady state.

Financial frictions, interest rate dynamics, and international business cycle synchronization

AbstractA two‐country real business cycle model with national endogenous borrowing constraints and working capital requirements can account for the high level of international co‐movements. The effects of technology shocks are transmitted internationally through the dynamics of the interest rate. Specifically, the borrowing mechanism brings about a wedge between the real interest rate and the expected marginal product of capital, such that interest rates fall following positive technology shocks. A lower interest rate induces more investment by Foreign firms, which in turn contribute to greater synchronization of economic activities across countries. Moreover, terms of trade amplify the effects of technology shocks.

Fluctuations in Uncertainty, Efficient Borrowing Constraints and Firm Dynamics

In main essay of my dissertation I quantify the importance of microeconomic uncertainty shocks for the firm dynamics over the business cycle in economy with frictional financial markets. To begin, I document novel facts on asymmetric, cyclical behavior across age and size groups of firms in the US. Then I lay down a theory in which differences between firms originate from the presence of asymmetric information in the financial market and long-term efficient contracts with financial intermediaries. Fluctuations in microeconomic uncertainty drive movements of the endogenous borrowing constraint affecting real allocations and imply asymmetric response of firms to the shocks.

ENDOGENOUS BORROWING CONSTRAINTS AND WEALTH INEQUALITY

This paper studies the evolution of wealth inequality in an economy with endogenous borrowing constraints. In the model economy, young agents need to borrow to finance human capital investments but cannot commit to repaying their loans. Creditors can punish defaulters by banishing them permanently from the credit market. At equilibrium, loan default is prevented by imposing a borrowing limit tied to the borrower's inheritance. The heterogeneity in inheritances translates into heterogeneity in borrowing limits: endogenously, some borrowers face a zero borrowing limit, and some are partly constrained, whereas others are unconstrained. Depending on the initial distribution of inheritances, it is possible that all lineages are attracted either to the zero-borrowing-limit steady state or to the unconstrained-borrowing steady state—long-run equality. It is also possible that some lineages end up in one steady state and the rest in the other—complete polarization.

Preface: Special Issue on Dynamic Games in Macroeconomics

Many important questions in macroeconomics can be formulated as a dynamic game. For example, in dynamic general equilibrium models with public policy, where policymakers face a common agreed upon social objective, the optimal plans of the current government can fail to be time consistent (e.g., Kydland and Prescott [15] and Barro and Gordon [8]). This time inconsistency problem can be studied as a constrained optimization problem with forwardor backward-looking endogenous constraints on an enlarged state space (e.g., see Kydland and Prescott [16], Rustichini [27], Marcet and Marimon [21], or Feng et al. [13]), or as a dynamic game (i.e., Pollak [26], Peleg and Yaari [23], Phelan and Stacchetti [24]). A related situation arises when households make consumption-savings decisions and their intertemporal preferences are dynamically inconsistent. This problem was first studied in Strotz [29] andPollak [26] andhas been the focus of an extensive literature inmacroeconomics (e.g., see Laibson [17] and Bernheim et al. [10]). Yet another prototype dynamic game in macroeconomics arises in altruistic models of economic growth where the dynastic choice problem between generations is a strategic one. Models in this spirit were first introduced in Phelps and Pollak [25] and subsequently studied in Bernheim and Ray [9], Leininger [18], Amir [3], and Balbus et al. [5,6], among others. One additional prototype of a dynamic games and strategic interactions in macroeconomics occurs in models of endogenous borrowing constraints and sustainable debt (e.g., Chari and Kehoe [11] and Alvarez and Jermann [4]). This special issue of Dynamic Games and Applications collects recent papers providing new results on the existence, characterization, and the computation of dynamic equilibria in macroeconomic models with strategically interacting agents. The volume contains work in both dynamic and stochastic games. In the paper by Messner and Pavoni [22], the authors reconsider the nature of the solutions to incentive-constrained dynamic programs generated by recursive saddlepoint methods pioneered in the work of Marcet and Marimon [21].

Credit segmentation in general equilibrium

We build a general equilibrium model with endogenous borrowing constraints compatible with credit segmentation. There are personalized trading restrictions connecting prices with both portfolio constraints and consumption possibilities, a setting which has not thoroughly been addressed by the literature. Our approach is general enough to be compatible with incomplete market economies where there exist wealth-dependent and/or investment-dependent credit access, borrowing constraints precluding bankruptcy, or assets backed by physical collateral.To prove equilibrium existence, we assume that both investment on segmented assets is not required to obtain access to credit and transfers implementable in segmented markets can be super-replicated by investing in non-segmented markets. For instance, this super-replication property is satisfied if either (i) all individuals have access to borrow at a risk-free rate; or (ii) financial contracts make real promises in terms of non-perishable commodities; or (iii) promises are backed by physical collateral.

Banking bubbles and financial crises

This paper develops a tractable macroeconomic model with a banking sector in which banks face endogenous borrowing constraints. There is no uncertainty about economic fundamentals. Banking bubbles can emerge through a positive feedback loop mechanism. Changes in household confidence can cause the bubbles to burst, resulting in a financial crisis. Credit policy can mitigate economic downturns. The welfare gain is larger when the government interventions are more front loaded, given that the government injects the same amount of liquidity in terms of present value. Bank capital requirements can prevent the formation of banking bubbles by limiting leverage, but if too restrictive will lead to less lending and hence lower production.

Human Capital Risk, Contract Enforcement, and the Macroeconomy

We use data from the Survey of Consumer Finance and Survey of Income Program Participation to show that young households with children are under-insured against the risk that an adult member of the household dies. We develop a tractable macroeconomic model with human capital risk, age-dependent returns to human capital investment, and endogenous borrowing constraints due to the limited pledgeability of human capital. We show analytically that, consistent with the life insurance data, in equilibrium young households are borrowing constrained and under-insured. A calibrated version of the model can quantitatively account for the life-cycle variation of life-insurance holdings, financial wealth, earnings, and consumption inequality observed in the US data. Our analysis implies that a reform that makes consumer bankruptcy more costly, like the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005, leads to a substantial increase in the volume of both credit and insurance.