Market Freeze Research Articles

Bailout Stigma

ABSTRACTWe develop a model of bailout stigma in which accepting a bailout signals a firm's balance‐sheet weakness and reduces its funding prospects. To avoid stigma, high‐quality firms withdraw from subsequent financing after receiving bailouts or refuse bailouts altogether to send a favorable signal. The former leads to a short‐lived stimulation followed by a market freeze even worse than if there were no bailout. The latter revives the funding market, albeit with delay, to the level achievable without any stigma and implements a constrained optimal outcome. A menu of multiple bailout programs compounds bailout stigma and exacerbates the market freeze.

Market Freezes

AbstractMarket freezes are an interesting and theoretically challenging phenomenon —they are observed empirically, but cannot occur in standard models. This paper develops a formal theory of recurrent freezes emphasizing liquidity and self‐fulfilling prophecies. While it is well understood how to get hot and cold spells, where prices and quantities fluctuate, we get asset market freezes and thaws where trade completely stops and starts. The simplest specification gets this using negative asset returns. Other specifications use information frictions or fixed costs. We also consider credit freezes, analyze the extent to which the decentralized nature of trade matters, and discuss policy implications.

Counterparty choice, maturity shifts and market freezes: Lessons from the European interbank market

We explore the impact of relationship lending on the interbank debt maturity structure of banks using data from the e-MID market covering both pre- and post-Lehman periods. We study the term structure and maturity shortening of interbank lending as an indicator of risk in times of stress. We identify bank-level and pair-level variables which are shown to contain information about the behaviour of lending relations during times of stress. Using a two-part fractional response model we show that durable liquidity relationships increase the probability of contracting term loans, but do not prevent maturity shortening during periods of acute stress. Finally, we find that lenders with concentrated short-term interbank liability structure tend to reduce their own long term lending, which confirms the rollover risk viewpoint of term interbank market freeze. Our findings are relevant for the modelling of interbank networks under stress and the design of forward looking stress tests for the banking system.

Information Acquisition and Market Freeze under Shadow Banking and Regulation

Information Acquisition and Market Freeze under Shadow Banking and Regulation

Macroprudential Policy with Liquidity Panics

Abstract We study the optimality of macroprudential policies in an environment where banks provide liquidity to firms. Informational frictions between banks can cause interbank market freezes, prompting firms to accumulate their own liquid assets. Liquidity hoarding by firms in turn reduces the demand for bank loans and bank profitability, makes interbank market freezes even more likely, and may ultimately trigger a self-fulfilling bad equilibrium. Such “liquidity panics” provide an additional rationale for liquidity requirements on banks, which alleviate frictions in the banking sector and, paradoxically, can increase aggregate investment. Instead, policies encouraging bank lending can have the opposite effect.

Market Freeze and Bank Capital Structure Heterogeneity

We develop a theory wherein a priori identical banks may trade loans in a search market with reusable information. The equilibrium is unique, but its nature depends on the probability of a future market state. When the probability of a boom is high, all banks hold no equity and do no screening. When this probability is low, all banks choose a high level of equity and screen loans. For intermediate probability values, the equilibrium is heterogeneous, with some banks posting equity and screening and others avoiding equity and screening. This endogenously arising heterogeneity generates interbank trading. The credit market is partially frozen in a recession: only high-capital banks have continued funding access. Low-capital banks obtain funding by selling legacy loans to banks with “financial muscle,” so market funding is reallocated from low-capital to high-capital banks. This paper was accepted by Bruno Biais, finance.

Market Freezes

Market Freezes

Counterparty Choice, Maturity Shifts and Market Freezes: Lessons from the e-MID Interbank Market

Counterparty Choice, Maturity Shifts and Market Freezes: Lessons from the e-MID Interbank Market

The Six Lessons of Mises

From the perspective of the market as a process, the market only exists to the extent that exchanges take place. So, what is better in times of social isolation: intervene to ensure that the market works or let the market freeze freely? Moreover, to what extent is it possible to intervene in the market in times of pandemic, preserving the principles of economic freedom? Based on the principles of cooperation and economic calculation proposed by Mises, the objective of this paper is to analyze the possibilities of public policy in a situation of social isolation. Among the main public policy devised in this time of the pandemic, the following measures have provided the continuity of the market process: credit, tax deferrals, and emergency assistance or paycheck protection program. The concern with the preservation of the economic calculation extends to all supply chain linkages, including final customers, for to companies continue to do their economic calculation.

Market Freezes

Market Freezes

Market Freeze and Bank Capital Structure Heterogeneity

This paper develops a theory in which heterogeneity in bank capital choices arises in a general equilibrium despite ex ante identical banks. In a future state, the credit market is partially frozen in a crisis - high-capital banks have continued access to funding liquidity but low-capital banks do not. Inter-bank trading in legacy assets allows some frozen banks to sell assets to banks with “financial muscle” to obtain funding. Consequently, there is a reallocation of access to market funding from low-capital to high-capital banks. Inter-bank trading unfreezes the market without government intervention.

Ambiguity in securitization markets

Abstract During the financial crisis of 2008, origination and trading in asset-backed securities markets dropped dramatically. I present a model with ambiguity-averse investors to explain how such a market freeze could occur and to investigate how ambiguity affects origination and securitization decisions. The model shows how non-fundamental factors such as ambiguity can lead to market freezes and fire sales, as well as reductions in real economic activity. I consider the differing implications of a non-fundamental shock, such as ambiguity, and fundamental shocks, such as changes in risk or a deterioration of expected value. Market outcomes can change more abruptly under ambiguity than under either fundamental deterioration or risk alone. Additionally, ambiguity leads to different policy implications than fundamental shocks do.

Ambiguity in Securitization Markets

Abstract During the financial crisis of 2008, origination and trading in asset-backed securities markets dropped dramatically. I present a model with ambiguity-averse investors to explain how such a market freeze could occur and to investigate how ambiguity affects origination and securitization decisions. The model shows how non-fundamental factors such as ambiguity can lead to market freezes and fire sales, as well as reductions in real economic activity. I consider the differing implications of a non-fundamental shock, such as ambiguity, and fundamental shocks, such as changes in risk or a deterioration of expected value. Market outcomes can change more abruptly under ambiguity than under either fundamental deterioration or risk alone. Additionally, ambiguity leads to different policy implications than fundamental shocks do.

The Federal Funds Market over the 2007-09 Crisis

This paper measures how the 2007-09 financial crisis affected the U.S. federal funds market. I accomplish this by developing and estimating a structural model of this market, in which intermediation plays a crucial role and borrowing banks differ in their unobserved probability of default. The estimates imply that the expected probability of default increases 0.29 percentage point at the start of the crisis in mid-2007 and then gains a further 1.91 percentage points after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. These increases do not cause a market freeze, however, because simultaneously there is a shift outward in the supply of funds. The model indicates that amid the turmoil of the crisis, lenders viewed the fed funds market as a relatively attractive place to invest cash overnight.

Information Acquisition and Liquidity Traps in Over-the-Counter Markets

I analyze the interaction between buyers’ information acquisition and market liquidity in over-the-counter markets with adverse selection. If a buyer anticipates that future buyers will acquire information about asset quality, she has an incentive to acquire information to avoid buying a lemon that will be hard to sell later. However, when current buyers acquire information, they cream-skim the market, leaving a larger fraction of lemons for sale and giving future buyers an incentive to acquire information. A liquid market can go through a self-fulfilling market freeze when buyers start to acquire information. More importantly, if information acquisition continues for a long enough period of time, the market gets stuck in an information trap with low liquidity: information acquisition worsens the composition of assets remaining on the market, and the bad composition incentivizes information acquisition. This prediction helps explain why the market for non-agency residential mortgage-backed securities experienced a sudden drop in liquidity—as potential buyers realized the need for greater due diligence—but has remained essentially dormant despite a strong recovery in the housing market.

Credit Supply and Productivity Growth

We study the impact of bank credit supply on firm output and productivity. By exploiting a matched firm-bank database which covers all the credit relationships of Italian corporations over more than a decade, we measure idiosyncratic supply-side shocks to firms' credit availability. We use our data to estimate a production model augmented with financial frictions and show that an expansion in credit supply leads firms to increase both their inputs and their output (value added and revenues) for a given level of inputs. Our estimates imply that a credit crunch will be followed by a productivity slowdown, as experienced by most OECD countries after the Great Recession. Quantitatively, the credit contraction between 2007 and 2009 could account for about a quarter of the observed decline in Italy's total factor productivity growth. The results are robust to an alternative measurement of credit supply shocks that uses the 2007-08 interbank market freeze as a natural experiment to control for assortative matching between borrowers and lenders. Finally, we investigate possible channels: access to credit fosters IT-adoption, innovation, exporting, and the adoption of superior management practices.

Asset quality, debt maturity, and market liquidity

We construct a model that endogenizes both the debt maturity choices of financial institutions and the liquidity of the asset market in a Rational Expectations Equilibrium. And we find that the decrease in asset quality can cause over-reliance on short-term debt and also lower market liquidity at the same time. Our result provides a new mechanism of market freeze and sheds light on unifiedy understanding the maturity mismatch and liquidity dry-ups of the asset market during the recent global financial crisis.

Financial complexity and trade

What are the implications on trading activity if investors are not sophisticated enough to understand and evaluate trades that have a complex payoff structure? Can frictions generated by this type of financial complexity be so severe that they lead to a complete market freeze, like that of the recent financial crisis? Starting from an allocation that is not Pareto optimal, we find that whether complexity impedes trade depends on how investors perceive risk and uncertainty. For smooth convex preferences, such as subjective expected utility, complexity cannot halt trade, even in the extreme case where each investor is so unsophisticated that he can only trade up to one Arrow–Debreu security, without being able to combine two or more in order to construct a complex trade. However, for non-smooth preferences, which allow for kinked indifference curves, such as maxmin expected utility, complexity can completely shut down trade.

Does interbank market matter for business cycle fluctuation? An estimated DSGE model with financial frictions for the Euro area

The aim of this paper is to assess the impact of an increase in the European interbank riskiness and its influence on the business cycle. In order to do that, we build an estimated DSGE model that includes an explicit interbank market. Our results show that an increase of interbank default risk can generate a money market freeze. The subsequent flight-to-quality diverts funds from the risky interbank to the safer government bonds market causing a reduction of the credit supply. In this scenario, the standard monetary policy is ineffective due to the decoupling of policy and credit interest rates. A supplementary monetary stimulus is able to reduce default risk and thus shifting financial intermediaries preferences towards interbank lending. Finally, the monetary authority is able to avoid the accumulation of safe assets, partially alleviating the liquidity shortage and, to a lesser extent, dampen the drop in the real activity.

Credit Supply and Productivity Growth

We study the impact of bank credit supply on firm output and productivity. By exploiting a matched firm-bank database which covers all the credit relationships of Italian corporations over more than a decade, we measure idiosyncratic supply-side shocks to firms' credit availability. We use our data to estimate a production model augmented with financial frictions and show that an expansion in credit supply leads firms to increase both their inputs and their output (value added and revenues) for a given level of inputs. Our estimates imply that a credit crunch will be followed by a productivity slowdown, as experienced by most OECD countries after the Great Recession. Quantitatively, the credit contraction between 2007 and 2009 could account for about a quarter of the observed decline in Italy's total factor productivity growth. The results are robust to an alternative measurement of credit supply shocks that uses the 2007-08 interbank market freeze as a natural experiment to control for assortative matching between borrowers and lenders. Finally, we investigate possible channels: access to credit fosters IT-adoption, innovation, exporting, and the adoption of superior management practices.