Business Cycles and the Balance Sheets of the Financial and Non-financial Sectors


Book Description

I propose and estimate a dynamic model of financial intermediation to study the different roles of the condition of banks' and firms' balance sheets in real activity. The net worth of firms determines their borrowing capacity both from households and banks. Banks provide risky loans to multiple firms and use their diversified portfolio as collateral to borrow from households. This intermediation process allows additional funds to flow from households to firms. Banks require net worth for intermediation as they are exposed to aggregate risk. The net worth of banks and firms are both state variables. In normal recessions, firm and bank net worth play the same role, so their sum determines the allocation of capital. During financial crises, shocks to bank net worth have an additional effect beyond that in standard financial frictions' models. This mechanism works through intermediation and affects activity, even if shocks redistribute net worth from banks to firms. I estimate my model and find that the new mechanism accounts for 40% of the fall in output and 80% of the fall in bank net worth during the Great Recession. Finally, the model is consistent with the different dynamics of the share of bank loans in total firm debt and credit spreads during the recessions of 1990, 2001, and 2008.




Financial Frictions and Sources of Business Cycle


Book Description

This paper estimates a New Keynesian DSGE model with an explicit financial intermediary sector. Having measures of financial stress, such as the spread between lending and borrowing, enables the model to capture the impact of the financial crisis in a more direct and efficient way. The model fits US post-war macroeconomic data well, and shows that financial shocks play a greater role in explaining the volatility of macroeconomic variables than marginal efficiency of investment (MEI) shocks.







Corporate Finance, Governance and Business Cycles


Book Description

Corporate Finance, Governance, and Business Cycles describes a model of how a financial system coordinates and shapes certain stylised facts of business cycles. The model is based on a conflict of interest between more risk averse bondholders, and less risk averse stockholders whose risk aversion changes over time. The corporate governance resolution of this conflict assigns the operating decisions of the firm to stockholders and the financing decisions to bondholders. Financing decisions are then linked to operating decisions in a way that coalesces the welfare of bondholders and stockholders over the business cycle. Evidence from the nonfinancial business sector of the G-7 countries does not reject the predictions of the model.




Understanding Financial Accounts


Book Description

Understanding Financial Accounts seeks to show how a range of questions on financial developments can be answered with the framework of financial accounts and balance sheets, by providing non-technical explanations illustrated with practical examples.




Monetary Policy and Balance Sheets


Book Description

This paper evaluates the strength of the balance sheet channel in the U.S. monetary policy transmission mechanism over the past three decades. Using a Factor-Augmented Vector Autoregression model on an expanded data set, including sectoral balance sheet variables, we show that the balance sheets of various economic agents act as important links in the monetary policy transmission mechanism. Balance sheets of financial intermediaries, such as commercial banks, asset-backed-security issuers and, to a lesser extent, security brokers and dealers, shrink in response to monetary tightening, while money market fund assets grow. The balance sheet effects are comparable in magnitude to the traditional interest rate channel. However, their economic significance in the run-up to the recent financial crisis was small. Large increases in interest rates would have been needed to avert a rapid rise of house prices and an unsustainable expansion of mortgage credit, suggesting an important role for macroprudential policies.




Handbook of Monetary Economics 3A


Book Description

What tools are available for setting and analyzing monetary policy? World-renowned contributors examine recent evidence on subjects as varied as price-setting, inflation persistence, the private sector's formation of inflation expectations, and the monetary policy transmission mechanism. Stopping short of advocating conclusions about the ideal conduct of policy, the authors focus instead on analytical methods and the changing interactions among the ingredients and properties that inform monetary models. The influences between economic performance and monetary policy regimes can be both grand and muted, and this volume clarifies the present state of this continually evolving relationship. Explores the models and practices used in formulating and transmitting monetary policies Raises new questions about the volume, price, and availability of credit in the 2007-2010 downturn Questions fiscal-monetary connnections and encourages new thinking about the business cycle itself Observes changes in the formulation of monetary policies over the last 25 years




After the Crash


Book Description

A Brookings Institution Press and Nomura Institute of Capital Markets Research publication As the global economy continues to weather the effects of the recession brought on by the financial crisis of 2007–08, perhaps no sector has been more affected and more under pressure to change than the industry that was the focus of that crisis: financial services. But as policymakers, financial experts, lobbyists, and others seek to rebuild this industry, certain questions loom large. For example, should the pay of financial institution executives be regulated to control risk taking? That possibility certainly has been raised in official circles, with spirited reactions from all corners. How will stepped-up regulation affect key parts of the financial services industry? And what lies ahead for some of the key actors in both the United States and Japan? In After the Crash, noted economists Yasuyuki Fuchita, Richard Herring, and Robert Litan bring together a distinguished group of experts from academia and the private sector to take a hard look at how the financial industry and some of its practices are likely to change in the years ahead. Whether or not you agree with their conclusions, the authors of this volume—the most recent collaboration between Brookings, the Wharton School, and the Nomura Institute of Capital Markets Research—provide well-grounded insights that will be helpful to financial practitioners, analysts, and policymakers.




Current Issues in Economics and Finance


Book Description

This book discusses wide topics related to current issues in economic growth and development, international trade, macroeconomic and financial stability, inflation, monetary policy, banking, productivity, agriculture and food security. It is a collection of seventeen research papers selected based on their quality in terms of contemporary topic, newness in the methodology, and themes. All selected papers have followed an empirical approach to address research issues, and are segregated in five parts. Part one covers papers related to fiscal and price stability, monetary policy and economic growth. The second part contains works related to financial integration, capital market volatility and macroeconomic stability. Third part deals with issues related to international trade and economic growth. Part four covers topics related to productivity and firm performance. The final part discusses issues related to agriculture and food security. The book would be of interest to researchers, academicians as a ready reference on current issues in economics and finance.




The Financial Systems of Industrial Countries


Book Description

This book offers a comprehensive overview of the financial systems of major industrialized countries using the statistical framework of the financial accounts. After a discussion of how economists agreed to create a framework to monitor the financial linkages between surplus and deficit sectors, the book analyzes in detail the composition and the recent evolution of financial assets and liabilities for households (including public pension rights), firms and intermediaries. Next, the volume studies the convergence patterns of financial structures and their influence on the effectiveness of monetary policy within European countries. The final chapter unifies the previous pictures, showing how the effects of financial integration and global imbalances could have been foreseen based on the financial accounts. The analysis and information contained in the book will help the readers to understand many issues and challenges raised by the recent financial crisis.