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Working Paper
Fiscal Stimulus under Sovereign Risk
The excess procyclicality of fiscal policy is commonly viewed as a central malaise in emerging economies. We document that procyclicality is more pervasive in countries with higher sovereign risk and provide a model of optimal fiscal policy with nominal rigidities and endogenous sovereign default that can account for this empirical pattern. Financing a fiscal stimulus is costly for risky countries and can render countercyclical policies undesirable, even in the presence of large Keynesian stabilization gains. We also show that imposing austerity can backfire by exacerbating the exposure to ...
Working Paper
International Reserves and Rollover Risk
We study the optimal accumulation of international reserves in a quantitative model of sovereign default with long-term debt and a risk-free asset. Keeping higher levels of reserves provides a hedge against rollover risk, but this is costly because using reserves to pay down debt allows the government to reduce sovereign spreads. Our model, parameterized to mimic salient features of a typical emerging economy, can account for a significant fraction of the holdings of international reserves, and the larger accumulation of both debt and reserves in periods of low spreads and high income. We ...
Working Paper
Overborrowing and systemic externalities in the business cycle
Credit constraints that link a private agent?s debt to market-determined prices embody a credit externality that drives a wedge between competitive and constrained socially optimal equilibria, inducing private agents to overborrow. The externality arises because agents fail to internalize the debt-deflation effects of additional borrowing when negative income shocks trigger the credit constraint. We quantify the effects of this inefficiency in a two-sector dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model of a small open economy calibrated to emerging markets. The credit externality increases the ...
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Reverse Speculative Attacks
In January 2015, in the face of sustained capital inflows, the Swiss National Bank abandoned the floor for the Swiss Franc against the Euro, a decision which led to the appreciation of the Swiss Franc. The objective of this paper is to present a simple framework that helps to better understand the timing of this episode, which we label a ?reverse speculative attack?. We model a central bank which wishes to maintain a peg, and responds to increases in demand for domestic currency by expanding its balance sheet. In contrast to the classic speculative attacks, which are triggered by the ...
Working Paper
Efficient bailouts?
This paper develops a non-linear DSGE model to assess the interaction between ex-post interventions in credit markets and the build-up of risk ex ante. During a systemic crisis, bailouts relax balance sheet constraints and mitigate the severity of the recession. Ex ante, the anticipation of such bailouts leads to an increase in risk-taking, making the economy more vulnerable to a financial crisis. The optimal policy requires, in general, a mix of ex-post intervention and ex-ante prudential policy. We also analyze the effects of bailouts on financial stability and welfare in the absence of ...
Working Paper
Bank Runs, Fragility, and Regulation
We examine banking regulation in a macroeconomic model of bank runs. We construct a general equilibrium model where banks may default because of fundamental or self-fulfilling runs. With only fundamental defaults, we show that the competitive equilibrium is constrained efficient. However, when banks are vulnerable to runs, banks’ leverage decisions are not ex-ante optimal: individual banks do not internalize that higher leverage makes other banks more vulnerable. The theory calls for introducing minimum capital requirements, even in the absence of bailouts.
Working Paper
International reserves and rollover risk
Two striking facts about international capital flows in emerging economies motivate this paper: (1) Governments hold large amounts of international reserves, for which they obtain a return lower than their borrowing cost. (2) Purchases of domestic assets by nonresidents and purchases of foreign assets by residents are both procyclical and collapse during crises. We propose a dynamic model of endogenous default that can account for these facts. The government faces a trade-off between the benefits of keeping reserves as a buffer against rollover risk and the cost of having larger gross debt ...
Working Paper
Fiscal Stimulus Under Sovereign Risk
The excess procyclicality of fiscal policy is commonly viewed as a central malaise in emerging economies. We document that procyclicality is more pervasive in countries with higher sovereign risk and provide a model of optimal fiscal policy with nominal rigidities and endogenous sovereign default that can account for this empirical pattern. Financing a fiscal stimulus is costly for risky countries and can render countercyclical policies undesirable, even in the presence of large Keynesian stabilization gains. We also show that imposing austerity can backfire by exacerbating the exposure to ...
Working Paper
The Optimal Monetary Policy Response to Tariffs
What is the optimal monetary policy response to tariffs? This paper explores this question within an open-economy New Keynesian model and shows that the optimal monetary policy response is expansionary, with inflation rising above and beyond the direct effects of tariffs. This result holds regardless of whether tariffs apply to consumption goods or intermediate inputs, whether the shock is temporary or permanent, and whether tariffs address other distortions.