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Working Paper
Helicopter Drops and Liquidity Traps
We show that if the central bank operates without commitment and faces constraints on its balance sheet, helicopter drops can be a useful stabilization tool during a liquidity trap. With commitment, even with balance sheet constraints, helicopter drops are, at best, irrelevant.
Working Paper
Bank Runs, Fragility, and Credit Easing
We present a tractable dynamic macroeconomic model of self-fulfilling bank runs. A bank is vulnerable to a run when a loss of investors’ confidence triggers deposit withdrawals and leads the bank to default on its obligations. We analytically characterize how the vulnerability of an individual bank depends on macroeconomic aggregates and how the number of banks facing a run affects macroeconomic aggregates in turn. In general equilibrium, runs can be partial or complete, depending on aggregate leverage and the dynamics of asset prices. Our normative analysis shows that the effectiveness of ...
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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 ...
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Coordination and Crisis in Monetary Unions
We study fiscal and monetary policy in a monetary union with the potential for rollover crises in sovereign debt markets. Member-country fiscal authorities lack commitment to repay their debt and choose fiscal policy independently. A common monetary authority chooses inflation for the union, also without commitment. We first describe the existence of a fiscal externality that arises in the presence of limited commitment and leads countries to over-borrow; this externality rationalizes the imposition of debt ceilings in a monetary union. We then investigate the impact of the composition of ...
Working Paper
Exchange Rate Policies at the Zero Lower Bound
We study how a monetary authority pursues an exchange rate objective in an environment that features a zero lower bound (ZLB) constraint on nominal interest rates and limits to international arbitrage. If the nominal interest rate that is consistent with interest rate parity is positive, the central bank can achieve its exchange rate objective by choosing that interest rate, a well-known result in international ?nance. However, if the rate consistent with parity is negative, pursuing an exchange rate objective necessarily results in zero nominal interest rates, deviations from parity, capital ...
Working Paper
Helicopter Drops and Liquidity Traps
We show that if the central bank operates without commitment and faces constraints on its balance sheet, helicopter drops can be a useful stabilization tool during a liquidity trap. With commitment, even with balance sheet constraints, helicopter drops are, at best, irrelevant.
Report
Micro Risks and Pareto Improving Policies with Low Interest Rates
We provide sufficient conditions for the feasibility of a Pareto-improving fiscal policy when the risk-free interest rate on government bonds is below the growth rate. We do so in the class of incomplete markets models pioneered by Bewley-Huggett-Aiyagari, but we allow for an arbitrary amount of ex ante heterogeneity in terms of preferences and income risk. We consider both the case of dynamic inefficiency as well as the more plausible case of dynamic efficiency. The key condition is that seigniorage revenue raised by government bonds exceeds the increase in the interest rate times the ...
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Self-Fulfilling Debt Dilution: Maturity and Multiplicity in Debt Models
We establish that creditor beliefs regarding future borrowing can be self-fulfilling, leading to multiple equilibria with markedly different debt accumulation patterns. We characterize such indeterminacy in the Eaton-Gersovitz sovereign debt model augmented with long maturity bonds. Two necessary conditions for the multiplicity are: (i) the government is more impatient than foreign creditors, and (ii) there are deadweight losses from default; both are realistic and standard assumptions in the quantitative literature. The multiplicity is dynamic and stems from the self-fulfilling beliefs of ...
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Pareto Improving Fiscal and Monetary Policies: Samuelson in the New Keynesian Model
This paper explores the positive and normative consequences of government bond issuances in a New Keynesian model with heterogeneous agents, focusing on how the stock of government bonds affects the cross-sectional allocation of resources in the spirit of Samuelson (1958). We characterize the Pareto optimal levels of government bonds and the associated monetary policy adjustments that should accompany Pareto-improving bond issuances. The paper introduces a simple phase diagram to analyze the global equilibrium dynamics of inflation, interest rates, and labor earnings in response to changes in ...
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Reputation and Sovereign Default
This paper presents a continuous-time model of sovereign debt. In it, a relatively impatient sovereign government?s hidden type switches back and forth between a commitment type, which cannot default, and an optimizing type, which can default on the country?s debt at any time, and assume outside lenders have particular beliefs regarding how a commitment type should borrow for any given level of debt and bond price. We show that if these beliefs satisfy reasonable assumptions, in any Markov equilibrium, the optimizing type mimics the commitment type when borrowing, revealing its type only by ...