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Working Paper
On the Measurement of Large Financial Firm Resolvability
We say that a large financial institution is "resolvable" if policymakers would allow it to go through unassisted bankruptcy in the event of failure. The choice between bankruptcy or bailout trades off the higher loss imposed on the economy in a potentially disruptive resolution against the incentive for excessive risk-taking created by an assisted resolution or a bailout. The resolution plans ("living wills") of large financial institutions contain information needed to evaluate this trade-off. In this paper, we propose a tool to complement the living will review process: an impact score ...
Discussion Paper
Some Options for Addressing Puerto Rico’s Fiscal Problems
Puerto Rico’s economic and fiscal challenges have been an important focus of work done here at the New York Fed, resulting in two reports (2012 and 2014), several blog posts and one paper in our Current Issues series in just the last few years. As the Commonwealth’s problems have deepened, the Obama administration and Congress have begun discussing potential approaches to addressing them. In this post, we update our previous estimates of Puerto Rico’s outstanding debt and discuss the effect that various forms of bankruptcy protection might have on the Commonwealth.
Working Paper
Cross-border banking on the two sides of the Atlantic: does it have an impact on bank crisis management?
In the United States and the European Union (EU), political incentives to oppose cross-border banking have been strong in spite of the measurable benefits to the real economy from breaking down geographic barriers. Even a federal-level supervisor and safety net are not by themselves sufficient to incentivizing cross-border banking although differences in the institutional set-up are reflected in the way the two areas responded to the crisis. The U.S. response was a coordinated response, and the cost of resolving banks was borne at the national level. Moreover, the Federal Deposit Insurance ...
Journal Article
What to Do When Large Firms Fail
Highlighted Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond Research: {{p}} "On the Measurement of Large Financial Firm Resolvability." Arantxa Jarque, John R. Walter, and Jackson Evert. Working Paper No. 18-06R, February 2018 (revised July 2018).
Working Paper
The credit card debt puzzle: the role of preferences, credit risk, and financial literacy
We use the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to revisit what is termed the credit card debt puzzle: why consumers simultaneously co-hold high-interest credit card debt and low-interest assets that could be used to pay down this debt. This dataset contains unique information on intelligence, financial literacy, and preferences, while also providing a complete picture of households? balance sheets. Relative to individuals with no credit card debt but positive liquid assets, individuals in the puzzle group have higher discount rates, slightly lower financial literacy scores, and very ...
Report
Personal Bankruptcy Protection and Household Debt
Increasing personal bankruptcy protection raises consumers’ desire to borrow and lenders’ cost of extending credit; the impact on equilibrium borrowing is ambiguous. Using bankruptcy protection changes between 1999 and 2005 across U.S. states, we find that borrowers respond to greater protection by increasing their unsecured debt. Border county estimates suggest that local economic conditions do not drive these results. Borrowers pay more for protection through higher interest rates, yet delinquency is unaffected. Remarkably, our results indicate that rising borrower demand outstripped ...
Working Paper
Losing Public Health Insurance: TennCare Disenrollment and Personal Financial Distress
A main goal of health insurance is to smooth out the financial risk that comes with health shocks and health care. Nevertheless, there has been relatively sparse evidence on how health insurance affects financial outcomes. The few studies that exist focus on the effect of gaining health insurance. This paper explores the effect of losing public health insurance on measures of individual financial well-being. In 2005, the state of Tennessee dropped about 170,000 individuals from Medicaid, resulting in a plausibly exogenous shock to health insurance status. Both across- and within-county ...
Working Paper
The Effects of Macroeconomic Shocks: Household Financial Distress Matters
When a macroeconomic shock arrives, variation in household balance-sheet health (captured by the presence of financial distress “FD”), leads to differential access to credit, and hence a distribution of consumption responses. As we document, though, over the past two recessions, households in prior FD also experienced macroeconomic shocks more intensely than others, leading to a distribution of shock severity. Quantifying the importance of each dimension of heterogeneity (FD or shock severity) for consumption requires a structural model. We find that heterogeneity in FD matters more than ...
Working Paper
Liquidity Windfalls: The Consequences of Repo Rehypothecation
This paper presents a model of repo rehypothecation in which dealers intermediate funds and collateral between cash lenders (e.g., money market funds) and prime brokerage clients (e.g., hedge funds). Dealers take advantage of their position as intermediaries, setting different repo terms with each counterparty. In particular, the difference in haircuts represents a positive cash balance for the dealer that can be an important source of liquidity. The model shows that dealers with higher default risk are more exposed to runs by collateral providers than to runs by cash lenders, who are ...