Research Database

Many claims have been made about the potential benefits and the potential costs of adopting a system of universal banking in the United States. We evaluate these claims using a model where there is a moral hazard problem between banks and "borrowers," a moral hazard problem between banks and a deposit insurer, and a costly state verification problem. Under conditions we describe, allowing banks to take equity positions in firms strengthens their ability to extract surplus, and exacerbates problems of moral hazard. The incentives of universal banks to take equity positions will often be strongest when these problems are most severe.

Using an existing random matching model of money, I show that a once-for-all change in the quantity of money has short-run effects that are predominantly real and long-run effects that are in the direction of being predominantly nominal provided (i) the quantity of money is random and (ii) people learn about what happened to it only with a lag. The change in the quantity of money comes about through a random process of discovery that does not permit anyone to deduce the aggregate amount discovered when the change actually occurs.

In 1985–86 the authors were members of a team that constructed a static applied general equilibrium model that was used to analyze the impact on the Spanish economy of the 1986 fiscal reform, which accompanied Spain’s entry into the European Community. This paper compares the results obtained to recently published data for 1985–87; we find that the model performed well in predicting the changes in relative prices and resource allocation that actually occurred, particularly if we incorporate exogenous shocks that affected the Spanish economy in 1986. We also analyze the sensitivity of the results to alternative specifications of the labor market and macroeconomic closure rules; we find that the central results are robust.

This paper demonstrates a connection between failure of Walras’ Law and nonoptimal equilibria in a quite general overlapping generations model. Consider the following implication of Walras’ Law in finite economies. Suppose that all prices are positive and that all agents are on their budget lines. Then, no matter how the set of goods is partitioned, there cannot be an excess supply (in value terms) for some other set in the partition with excess demand (in value terms) for some other set in the partition. We use the Cass (1972), Benveniste (1976, 1986), Balasko and Shell (1980), and Okuno and Zilcha (1980) price characterization of optimality of equilibria in pure exchange overlapping generations models to show the following link between the above implication of Walras’ Law and optimality of a competitive equilibrium. A competitive equilibrium is nonoptimal if and only if the above implication of Walras’ Law fails in its neighborhood.

We consider an environment in which risk-neutral firms must obtain external finance. They have access to two kinds of linear, stochastic investment opportunities. For one, return realizations are costlessly observed by all agents. For the other, return realizations are costlessly observed only by the investing firm; however, they can be (privately) observed by outsiders who bear a fixed verification cost. Thus, the second investment opportunity is subject to a standard costly state verification (CSV) problem of the type considered by Townsend (1979), Gale and Hellwig (1985), or Williamson (1986, 1987).

We examine the optimal allocations of investment between the two kinds of projects, as well as the optimal contract used to finance it. We show that the optimal contractual outcome can be supported by having firms issue appropriate (and determinate) quantities of debt and equity securities to outside investors.

The optimal debt-equity ratio necessarily depends (in part) on the firm’s asset structure. Investments in projects subject to CSV problems are associated (in a sense to be made precise) with the use of debt—as might be expected from the existing CSV literature. Investments in projects with publicly observable returns are associated with the use of external equity.

We examine in detail the relationship between the optimal asset and liability structure of the firm. We also describe conditions under which an increase in the cost of state verification shifts the composition of investment towards projects with observable returns, and reduces the optimal debt-equity ratio. Interestingly, the optimal debt-equity ratio is also shown to depend on factors that are irrelevant to asset allocations.

Finally, a large part of the interest in CSV environments has been due to the fact that they may result in equilibrium credit rationing. Our analysis has strong implications for the possibility of equilibrium credit rationing in more general CSV models.

In an overlapping generations model with borrowing and lending, uncertainty, and asymmetric information, fiat money may be essential to the existence of a competitive equilibrium. It may also serve to enhance the information of economic agents in a well-defined sense. In addition, the model presented provides suggestions about why the presence of valued fiat currency is essential to existence of equilibrium, even though in equilibrium perfect substitutes for money may exist.

A model of credit rationing based on asymmetrically informed borrowers and lenders is developed. In this context, sufficient conditions are derived for an appropriate government policy response to credit rationing to be a continuously open discount window. It is also demonstrated that such a policy can be deflationary, and that given a commitment to operate in this way, the monopoly issue of liabilities can Pareto dominate their competitive issuance.

For a wide class of dynamic models, Chamley (1986) has shown that the optimal capital income tax rate is zero in the long run. Lucas (1990) has argued that for the U.S. economy there is a significant welfare gain from switching to this policy. We show that for the Bewley (1986) class of models with heterogeneous agents and incomplete markets (due to uninsured idiosyncratic shocks), and borrowing constraints the optimal tax rate on capital income is positive even in the long run. Quantitative analysis of a parametric version of such a model suggests that one cannot dismiss the possibility that the observed tax rates on capital and labor income for the U.S. economy are fairly close to being (long run) optimal. We also provide an existence proof for the dynamic Ramsey optimal tax problem in this environment.

Micro data over the life cycle shows two different patterns of consumption of housing and non-housing goods: the consumption profile of non-housing goods is hump-shaped while the consumption profile for housing first increases monotonically and then flattens out. These patterns hold true at each consumption quartile. This paper develops a quantitative, dynamic general equilibrium model of life cycle behavior, which generates consumption profiles consistent with the observed data. Borrowing constraints are essential in explaining the accumulation of housing assets early in life, while transaction costs are crucial in generating the slow downsizing of the housing assets later in life. The bequest motives play a role in determining total life time wealth, but not the housing profile.

We propose a definition of time consistent policy for infinite horizon economies with competitive private agents. Allocations and policies are defined as functions of the history of past policies. A sustainable equilibrium is a sequence of history-contingent policies and allocations that satisfy certain sequential rationality conditions for the government and for private agents. We provide a complete characterization of the sustainable equilibrium outcomes for a variant of Fischer's (1980) model of capital taxation. We also relate our work to recent developments in the theory of repeated games.

This paper examines the extent to which the equity premium puzzle can be resolved by taking account of the fact that stockholders bear a disproportionate share of output uncertainty. We do this in the context of a non-Walrasian RBC model where risk reallocation is justified by borrowing restrictions. The risk shifting mechanism we propose has the same effect as would arise from a substantial increase in the risk aversion parameter of the representative agent. As with more standard RBC models, it remains that our model is unable to replicate key financial statistics. In particular, the observation that the equity return is more variable than national product cannot be accounted for under standard technology assumptions.