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Financial Stability Considerations for Monetary Policy: Theoretical Mechanisms
This paper reviews the theoretical literature at the intersection of macroeconomics and finance to draw lessons on the connection between vulnerabilities in the financial system and the macroeconomy, and on how monetary policy affects that connection. This literature finds that financial vulnerabilities are inherent to financial systems and tend to be procyclical. Moreover, financial vulnerabilities amplify the effects of adverse shocks to the economy, so that even a small shock to fundamentals or a small revision of beliefs can create a self-reinforcing feedback loop that impairs credit ...
Working Paper
Sticky Leverage: Comment
We revisit the role of long-term nominal corporate debt for the transmission of inflation shocks in the general equilibrium model of Gomes, Jermann, and Schmid (2016, henceforth GJS). We show that inaccuracies in the model solution and calibration strategy lead GJS to a model equilibrium in which nominal long-term debt is systematically mispriced. As a result, the quantitative importance of corporate leverage in the transmission of inflation shocks to real activity in their framework is 6 times larger than what arises under the rational expectations equilibrium.
Working Paper
Financial intermediation, investment dynamics and business cycle fluctuations
I use micro data to quantify key features of U.S. firm financing. In particular, I establish that a substantial 35% of firms' investment is funded using financial markets. I then construct a dynamic equilibrium model that matches these features and fit the model to business cycle data using Bayesian methods. In the model, stylized banks enable trades of financial assets, directing funds towards investment opportunities, and charge an intermediation spread to cover their costs. According to the model estimation, exogenous shocks to the intermediation spread explain 35% of GDP and 60% of ...
Journal Article
No-arbitrage restrictions and the U.S. Treasury market
What is the role of arbitrage trading in the U.S. Treasury market? In this article, the authors discuss the pricing of risk-free Treasury securities via no-arbitrage arguments and illustrate how this approach works in models of the term structure of interest rates. The article ends with an evaluation of market frictions (for example, transaction costs, leverage constraints, and the limited availability of arbitrage capital) in the government debt market and their implications for bond pricing using no-arbitrage term structure models.
Journal Article
The Asymmetric Costs of Misperceiving R-star
The natural rate of interest, or r-star, is used to evaluate whether monetary policy is restrictive or supportive of economic activity. However, this benchmark rate can only be estimated, and policymakers’ misperceptions of the level of the natural rate can carry substantial economic costs in terms of unemployment and inflation. A scenario using mistaken perceptions shows that the costs of overestimating the natural rate are greater than the cost of underestimating it if policy space is limited by the effective lower bound on the nominal federal funds rate.
Working Paper
Financial Stability Considerations for Monetary Policy: Theoretical Mechanisms
This paper reviews the theoretical literature at the intersection of macroeconomics and finance to draw lessons on the connection between vulnerabilities in the financial system and the macroeconomy, and on how monetary policy affects that connection. This literature finds that financial vulnerabilities are inherent to financial systems and tend to be procyclical. Moreover, financial vulnerabilities amplify the effects of adverse shocks to the economy, so that even a small shock to fundamentals or a small revision of beliefs can create a self-reinforcing feedback loop that impairs credit ...