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Discussion Paper
Financial Crises and the Desirability of Macroprudential Policy
The global financial crisis has put financial stability risks?and the potential role of macroprudential policies in addressing them?at the forefront of policy debates. The challenge for macroeconomists is to develop new models that are consistent with the data while being able to capture the highly nonlinear nature of crisis episodes. In this post, we evaluate the impact of a macroprudential policy that has the government tilt incentives for banks to encourage them to build up their equity positions. The government has a role since individual banks do not internalize the systemic benefit of ...
Working Paper
Estimating Macroeconomic Models of Financial Crises: An Endogenous Regime-Switching Approach
We estimate a workhorse DSGE model with an occasionally binding borrowing constraint. First, we propose a new specification of the occasionally binding constraint, where the transition between the unconstrained and constrained states is a stochastic function of the leverage level and the constraint multiplier. This specification maps into an endogenous regime-switching model. Second, we develop a general perturbation method for the solution of such a model. Third, we estimate the model with Bayesian methods to fit Mexico's business cycle and financial crisis history since 1981. The estimated ...
Working Paper
Likelihood Evaluation of Models with Occasionally Binding Constraints
Applied researchers interested in estimating key parameters of DSGE models face an array of choices regarding numerical solution and estimation methods. We focus on the likelihood evaluation of models with occasionally binding constraints. We document how solution approximation errors and likelihood misspecification, related to the treatment of measurement errors, can interact and compound each other.
Working Paper
Approximately Right?: Global v. Local Methods for Open-Economy Models with Incomplete Markets
Global and local methods are widely used in international macroeconomics to analyze incomplete-markets models. We study solutions for an endowment economy, an RBC model and a Sudden Stops model with an occasionally binding credit constraint. First-order, second-order, risky steady state and DynareOBC solutions are compared v. fixed-point-iteration global solutions in the time and frequency domains. The solutions differ in key respects, including measures of precautionary savings, cyclical moments, impulse response functions, financial premia and macro responses to credit constraints, and ...
Working Paper
OccBin: A Toolkit for Solving Dynamic Models With Occasionally Binding Constraints Easily
We describe how to adapt a first-order perturbation approach and apply it in a piecewise fashion to handle occasionally binding constraints in dynamic models. Our examples include a real business cycle model with a constraint on the level of investment and a New Keynesian model subject to the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates. We compare the piecewise linear perturbation solution with a high-quality numerical solution that can be taken to be virtually exact. The piecewise linear perturbation method can adequately capture key properties of the models we consider. A key advantage of ...
Report
Credit spreads, financial crises, and macroprudential policy
Credit spreads display occasional spikes and are more strongly countercyclical in times of financial stress. Financial crises are extreme cases of this nonlinear behavior, featuring skyrocketing credit spreads, sharp losses in bank equity, and deep recessions. We develop a macroeconomic model with a banking sector in which banks? leverage constraints are occasionally binding and equity issuance is endogenous. The model captures the nonlinearities in the data and produces quantitatively realistic crises. Precautionary equity issuance makes crises infrequent but does not prevent them ...
Working Paper
A Generalized Time Iteration Method for Solving Dynamic Optimization Problems with Occasionally Binding Constraints
We study a generalized version of Coleman (1990)’s time iteration method (GTI) for solving dynamic optimization problems. Our benchmark framework is an irreversible investment model with labor-leisure choice. The GTI algorithm is simple to implement and provides advantages in terms of speed relative to Howard (1960)’s improvement algorithm. A second application on a heterogeneous-agents incomplete-markets model further explores the performance of GTI.
Report
Estimating Macroeconomic Models of Financial Crises: An Endogenous Regime-Switching Approach
We estimate a workhorse dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model with an occasionally binding borrowing constraint. First, we propose a new specification of the occasionally binding constraint, where the transition between the unconstrained and constrained states is a stochastic function of the leverage level and the constraint multiplier. This specification maps into an endogenous regime-switching model. Second, we develop a general perturbation method for the solution of such a model. Third, we estimate the model with Bayesian methods to fit Mexico’s business cycle and ...