Macro Prudential Policy In A Fisherian Model Of Financial Innovation

The interaction between credit frictions, financial innovation, and a switch from optimistic to pessimistic beliefs played a central role in the 2008 financial crisis. This paper develops a quantitative general equilibrium framework in which this interaction drives the financial amplification mechanism to study the effects of macro-prudential policy. Financial innovation enhances the ability of agents to collateralize assets into debt, but the riskiness of this new regime can only be learned over time. Beliefs about transition probabilities across states with high and low ability to borrow change as agents learn from observed realizations of financial conditions. At the same time, the collateral constraint introduces a pecuniary externality, because agents fail to internalize the effect of their borrowing decisions on asset prices. Quantitative analysis shows that the effectiveness of macro-prudential policy in this environment depends on the government's information set, the tightness of credit constraints and the pace at which optimism surges in the early stages of financial innovation. The policy is least effective when the government is as uninformed as private agents, credit constraints are tight, and optimism builds quickly.

Macro-prudential policies aimed at mitigating systemic financial risks have become part of the policy toolkit in many emerging markets and some advanced countries. Their effectiveness and efficacy are not well-known, however. Using panel data regressions, we analyze how changes in balance sheets of some 2,800 banks in 48 countries over 2000–2010 respond to specific macro-prudential policies. Controlling for endogeneity, we find that measures aimed at borrowers––caps on debt-to-income and loan-to-value ratios––and at financial institutions––limits on credit growth and foreign currency lending––are effective in reducing asset growth. Countercyclical buffers are little effective through the cycle, and some measures are even counterproductive during downswings, serving to aggravate declines, consistent with the ex-ante nature of macro-prudential tools.

We study interactions between monetary and macroprudential policies in a model with nominal and financial frictions. The latter derive from a financial sector that provides credit and liquidity services that lead to a financial accelerator-cum-fire-sales amplification mechanism. In response to fluctuations in world interest rates, inflation targeting dominates standard Taylor rules, but leads to increased volatility in credit and asset prices. The use of a countercyclical macroprudential instrument in addition to the policy rate improves welfare and has important implications for the conduct of monetary policy. “Leaning against the wind” or augmenting a standard Taylor rule with an argument on credit growth may not be an effective policy response.

Emerging economies have high shares of self-employed individuals running owner-only firms who, in contrast to many salaried firms, have little access to formal financing and therefore rely on informal financing (input credit) from other firms. We build a small open economy real business cycle model with labor and financial market frictions where formal credit markets, informal credit, and the structure of the labor market interact. The model successfully replicates the cyclical behavior of sectoral employment, formal credit, and the main macroeconomic aggregates in emerging economies. We show that a countercyclical macroprudential policy that reduces formal credit fluctuations has positive though quantitatively limited effects on consumption and output volatility, but generates larger unemployment fluctuations in response to productivity shocks; the same policy increases labor market and aggregate volatility in response to net worth shocks. The link between input credit and the labor market structure---key for capturing the cyclical dynamics of labor and credit markets in the data---plays a crucial role for these results.

Following the severe financial crises of the 1990s, identifying and assessing financial sector vulnerabilities has become a key priority of the international community. The costly disruptions in global markets underscored the need to establish a set of monitorable variables for evaluating strengths and weaknesses in financial institutions and to alert authorities of impending problems. These variables, indicators, of financial system health and stability known collectively as macroprudential indicators, are the subject of this Occasional Paper by the Monetary and Exchange Affairs Department and the Statistics Department. Macroprudential indicators take measures at both the level of aggregated financial institutions and at the macroeconomic level; financial crises often occur when weaknesses are identified in both. The authors provide a breakdown and explanations of these indicators and a review of the theoretical and empirical work done thus far. Work at other international and multilateral institutions is included as well as the experiences of several national central banks and supervisory agencies. This paper provides a valuable reference source of current knowledge about macroprudential indicators and issues related to their analysis, identification, measurement, and possible dissemination.

Handbook of International Economics, Sixth Edition provides a definitive reference for researchers and advanced graduate students. The book includes self-contained surveys of the current state of a branch of economics in the form of chapters prepared by leading specialists. These surveys summarize not only received results but also newer developments from journal articles and discussion papers. Chapters cover The Global Financial Cycle, Dominant Currency Paradigm: a review, Rethinking exchange rate regimes, CIP deviations, the dollar, and frictions in international capital markets, International macroeconomics with imperfect financial markets, The prudential use of capital controls and foreign currency reserves, and Financial crises: a survey. Provides the authority and expertise of leading contributors from an international board of authors Presents the latest release in the Handbook of International Economics series Includes self-contained surveys of the current state of a branch of economics in the form of chapters prepared by leading specialists

We show that “preemptive” capital flow management measures (CFM) can reduce emerging markets and developing countries’ (EMDE) external finance premia during risk-off shocks, especially for vulnerable countries. Using a panel dataset of 56 EMDEs during 1996–2020 at monthly frequency, we document that countries with preemptive policies in place during the five year window before risk-off shocks experienced relatively lower external finance premia and exchange rate volatility during the shock compared to countries which did not have such preemptive policies in place. We use the episodes of Taper Tantrum and COVID-19 as risk-off shocks. Our identification relies on a difference-in-differences methodology with country fixed effects where preemptive policies are ex-ante by construction and cannot be put in place as a response to the shock ex-post. We control the effects of other policies, such as monetary policy, foreign exchange interventions (FXI), easing of inflow CFMs and tightening of outflow CFMs that are used in response to the risk-off shocks. By reducing the impact of risk-off shocks on countries’ funding costs and exchange rate volatility, preemptive policies enable countries’ continued access to international capital markets during troubled times.

Consistent with the Minsky hypothesis and the “volatility paradox” (Brunnermeier and Sannikov, 2014), recent empirical evidence suggests that financial crises tend to follow prolonged periods of financial stability and investor optimism. But does financial tranquility always call for more stringent regulation over time? We examine this question using a simple portfolio choice model that features the interaction between learning and externality. We evaluate the potential of a macroprudential policy to restore efficiency, and characterize the necessary and sufficient condition for the countercyclicality of the optimal regulation/macroprudential policy. Our paper implies that policymakers should not only consider the cyclical indicators “on the surface” (for example, credit growth), but also closely examine the deep structural change of the resilience of the system. The paper also highlights the importance of assigning the macroprudential policy function to independent agencies with technical expertise.