regime switches in exchange rate volatility and uncovered interest parity abstract we use a regime switching model to examine how exchange rate volatility is related to the failure of uncovered interest parity main findings are as follows first exchange rate returns are strongly influenced by regime switches in the relationship between the returns and interest rate differentials second low yielding currencies appreciate less frequently but once it occurs their movements are faster than when they depreciate third depreciation of low yielding currencies and low volatility are mutually dependent on each other finally these three findings are more evident for shorter horizons the second and third results are consistent with a market participants view short term carry trades in a low volatility environment and their rapid unwinding substantially influence exchange rates we consider the effects of funding liquidity to explain these results

banking panics information and rational expectations equilibrium this paper shows that bank runs can be modeled as an equilibrium phenomenon we demonstrate that some aspects of the intuitive story that bank runs start with fears of insolvency of banks can be rigorously modeled if individuals observe long lines at the bank they correctly infer that there is a possibility that the bank is about to fail and precipitate a bank run however bank runs occur even when no one has any adverse information extra market constraints such as suspension of convertibility can prevent bank runs and result in superior allocations banking panics were a recurrent phenomenon in the united states until the 1930s they have re emerged as a source of public concern and much theoretical research recently in this paper we provide an information theoretic rationale for bank runs the traditional story is that contagion is an important aspect of bank runs the idea seems to be that when the general public observes large withdrawals from the banking system fears of insolvency grow resulting in even larger withdrawals of deposits in our model some individuals withdraw because they get information that future returns are likely to be low uninformed individuals observing this also have an incentive to liquidate their investments in addition some individuals need to withdraw deposits for other than informationally based reasons thus if the random realization of such a group of individuals is unusually large then the uninformed individuals will be misled and will precipitate a run on the bank the technology is such that a large volume of withdrawals involves liquidation costs consequently runs on the bank do impose social costs a mechanism that may reduce these costs in our model is to suspend convertibility if withdrawals are high however those individuals who need to withdraw their assets for liquidity reasons are worse off ex post our model provides a rationalization for restrictions in demand deposits that were widespread prior to 1929 friedman and schwartz 7 suggest that restrictions of payments ensured

understanding bank runs the importance of depositor bank relationships and networks we use a unique new database to examine micro depositor level data for a bank that faced a run we use minute by minute depositor withdrawal data to understand the effectiveness of deposit insurance the role of social networks and the importance of bank depositor relationships in influencing depositor propensity to run we employ methods from the epidemiology literature which examine how diseases spread to estimate transmission probabilities of depositors running and the significant underlying factors we find that deposit insurance is only partially effective in preventing bank runs further our results suggest that social network effects are important but are mitigated by other factors in particular the length and depth of the bank depositor relationship depositors with longer relationships and those who have availed of loans from a bank are less likely to run during a crisis suggesting that cross selling acts not just as a revenue generator but also as a complementary insurance mechanism for the bank finally we find there are long term effects of a solvent bank run in that depositors who run do not return back to the bank our results help understand the underlying dynamics of bank runs and hold important policy implications

financial contagion and the wealth effect an experimental study abstract we design a laboratory experiment to test the importance of wealth as a channel for financial contagion across markets with unrelated fundamentals in a sequential global game we analyze the decisions of a group of investors that hold assets in two markets we consider two treatments that vary the level of diversification of these assets across markets in both treatments we find evidence of financial contagion when investors have completely diversified portfolios we provide evidence of contagion due to a wealth effect for certain ranges of fundamentals we show that a decrease in wealth from the investment in the first market makes withdrawals more likely in the second thereby increasing the probability of a crisis when portfolio diversification is small then social imitation is relevant in explaining contagion

foreign exchange market intervention and expectations the yen dollar exchange rate abstract using press reports and official statistics on central bank intervention in conjunction with options market data we find that central bank intervention had no statistically significant systematic impact on the mean or higher moments of the exchange rate during 1993 2000 we also find that japanese authorities appeared to intervene mainly in response to deviations of the exchange rate from some implicit target levels and to a rise in market uncertainty u s monetary authorities intervened only in cooperation with the japanese authorities

jumps cojumps and macro announcements we use recently proposed tests to extract jumps and cojumps from three types of assets stock index futures bond futures and exchange rates we then characterize the dynamics of these discontinuities and informally relate them to us macroeconomic releases before using limited dependent variable models to formally model how news surprises explain co jumps nonfarm payroll and federal funds target announcements are the most important news across asset classes trade balance shocks are important for foreign exchange jumps we relate the size frequency and timing of jumps across asset classes to the likely sources of shocks and the relation of asset prices to fundamentals in the respective classes

sulfur dioxide control by electric utilities what are the gains from trade title iv of the 1990 clean air act amendments caaa established a market for transferable sulfur dioxide so2 emission allowances among electric utilities this market offers firms facing high marginal abatement costs the opportunity to purchase the right to emit so2 from firms with lower costs and this is expected to yield cost savings compared to a command and control approach to environmental regulation this paper uses econometrically estimated marginal abatement cost functions for power plants affected by title iv of the caaa to evaluate the performance of the so2 allowance market specifically we investigate whether the much heralded fall in the cost of abating so2 compared to original estimates can be attributed to allowance trading we demonstrate that for plants that use low sulfur coal to reduce so2 emissions technical change and the fall in prices of low sulfur coal have lowered marginal abatement cost curves by over 50 percent since 1985 the flexibility to take advantage of these chan

financial contagion in the laboratory does network structure matter we explore the role of interbank network structure and premature liquidation costs for the likelihood of financial contagions in a laboratory experiment we consider complete versus incomplete networks of banks linked together by interbank deposits and we further vary premature liquidation costs subjects play the role of depositors deciding whether or not to withdraw funds from their interconnected bank we find that when liquidation costs are high a complete network structure is significantly less vulnerable to financial contagions than an incomplete network structure however when liquidation costs are low network structure is less important for the frequency of financial contagions

liquidity regulation banking history and financial fragility an experimental examination abstract we report an experiment conducted to evaluate interactions between liquidity requirements and depositors experiences with the banking system treatments consist of combinations of required liquidity levels and weak or strong background conditions intended to induce stable histories of play with few bank runs or unstable histories of play where bank runs are common experimental results suggest that both increased liquidity levels and a stable history of play improve the incidence of coordination on the pareto preferred no run outcome nevertheless even with an unstable history non degenerate no run outcomes occur quite reliably with high liquidity requirements

do depositors punish banks for bad behavior market discipline deposit insurance and banking crises this paper empirically investigates two issues largely unexplored by the literature on market discipline we evaluate the interaction between market discipline and deposit insurance and the impact of banking crises on market discipline we focus on the experiences of argentina chile and mexico during the 1980s and 1990s we find that depositors discipline banks by withdrawing deposits and by requiring higher interest rates deposit insurance does not appear to diminish the extent of market discipline aggregate shocks affect deposits and interest rates during crises regardless of bank fundamentals and investors responsiveness to bank risk taking increases in the aftermath of crises

evolution coordination and banking panics abstract i study equilibrium selection by an evolutionary process in an environment with multiple equilibria one of which involves a banking panic the analysis is built on a repeated version of the diamond dybvig 1983 model the optimal equilibrium is uniquely selected if it is also risk dominant when there are multiple banks the probability of observing a panic increases as the size of the banks decreases local interaction generates contagion effects that allow a bank run to spread first among banks in the same geographic location and then throughout the population

news announcements and price discovery in foreign exchange spot and futures markets abstract this paper studies competition in price discovery between spot and futures rates for the eur usd and jpy usd markets around scheduled macroeconomic announcements using both the information shares approach and the common factor component weight approach for futures prices from the chicago mercantile exchange cme as well as deal prices from spot trading on the electronic broking services ebs we gauge how foreign exchange spot and futures markets respond to news surprises the results show that the spot rates provide more price discovery than do the cme futures rates overall however the contribution of the futures rates to price discovery increases in the time surrounding macroeconomic announcement releases

distinguishing panics and information based bank runs welfare and policy implications in this paper we contrast panics and information based bank runs in an effort to provide a robust and empirically plausible model of how bank runs are triggered the model of information based runs is characterized by two sided asymmetric information the bank cannot observe the true liquidity needs of the depositors while depositors are asymmetrically informed about bank asset quality we also examine the relative degrees of risk sharing provided by bank deposit contracts and traded equity contracts we show that the choice of deposit or equity depends on the attributes of and information about the underlying investment returns

that s how we roll an experiment on rollover risk abstract we design a continuous time experiment to study how different short term credit maturities interact with the state of the economy we find that when the economy is in a boom long maturities stabilize the credit market yet when in a downturn such maturities increase the likelihood of credit freezes this result has important regulatory implications as it suggests that a policy aimed at reducing maturity mismatch in short term credit markets might backfire during a recession

an experiment on the causes of bank run contagions abstract to understand the mechanisms behind bank run contagions we conduct bank run experiments in a modified diamond dybvig setup with two banks left and right the banks liquidity levels are either linked or independent left bank depositors see their bank s liquidity level before deciding right bank depositors only see left bank withdrawals before deciding we find that left bank depositors actions significantly affect right bank depositors behavior even when liquidities are independent furthermore a panic may be a one way street an increase in left bank withdrawals can cause a panic run on the right bank but a decrease does not calm depositors

bank runs as coordination failures an experimental study we use experimental methods to investigate what factors contribute to breakdowns in coordination among a bank s depositors subjects in our experiment decide whether to leave their money deposited in a bank or withdraw it early a bank run occurs when there are too many early withdrawals we explore the effects of adding uncertainty about fundamental withdrawal demand and of changing the number of opportunities subjects have to withdraw our results show that i bank runs are rare when fundamental withdrawal demand is known but occur frequently when it is stochastic and ii subjects are more likely to withdraw when given multiple opportunities to do so than when presented with a single decision for the multiple opportunity case we evaluate individual withdrawal decisions according to a set of simple cutoff rules we find that the cutoff rule corresponding to the payoff dominant equilibrium of the game which involves bayesian updating of probabilities explains subject behavior better than other rules

bank run psychology abstract banks are inherently susceptible to panics and bank runs due to the problem of maturity mismatch resulting in both a stable equilibrium in which the bank survives and an unstable equilibrium in which a bank run occurs understanding equilibrium selection in this setting is extremely important for safeguarding financial stability in this paper one new potential factor that determines whether a bank runs gets triggered or not is experimentally studied namely the psychological state of the depositor prior to participating in an experimental bank run game subjects are either induced with fear sadness or happiness using an autobiographical emotion induction task the findings suggest that the presence of background fear significantly increases the likelihood of withdrawal and a subsequent bank run in addition women are shown to be significantly more likely to withdraw then men but only in the fear induction treatment

banking panics the role of the first come first served rule and information externalities this paper proposes that both the first come first served rule and information externalities are important in causing contagious bank runs the first come first served rule creates a negative payoff externality among depositors this payoff externality forces depositors to respond to early noisy information such as failures of other banks therefore failures of a few banks may trigger runs on other banks contagious runs may occur even if i depositors choose the pareto dominant equilibrium when there are multiple equilibria and ii the deposit contract is chosen to maximize depositor welfare the feasibility of reforming the fdic to impose market discipline is also investigated

impact of macro economic surprises on carry trade activity abstract can official news and policy announcements affect foreign exchange speculation a widespread speculative strategy in foreign exchange markets is carry trade this paper explores the links between macro economic news and foreign exchange options to identify macro economic fundamentals most relevant to the pricing of downside risk measured by risk reversals options contracts to carry trade activity focusing primarily on the japanese yen carry trade we identify a significant impact of macro economic surprises on dollar yen risk reversals the effect is sizeable with news related to bilateral trade balance of particular concern moreover there is a close link between risk reversals and speculative futures positions in japanese yen this allows us to quantify a substantial effect of macro economic news on carry trade activity with the cost of hedging as the transmission mechanism

informational channels of financial contagion two main classes of channels are studied as informational sources of financial contagion one is a fundamental channel that is based on real and financial links between economies and the second is a social learning channel that arises when agents base their decisions on noisy observations about the actions of others in foreign markets using global games i present a two country model of financial contagion in which both channels can operate and i test its predictions experimentally the experimental results show that subjects do not extract information optimally which leads to two systematic biases that affect these channels directly base rate neglect leads subjects to underweight their prior and thus weakens the fundamental channel an overreaction bias strengthens the social learning channel since subjects rely on information about the behavior of others even when this information is irrelevant these results have significant welfare effects rooted in the specific way in which these biases alter behavior

the role of demandable debt in structuring optimal banking arrangements demandable debt finance by banks warrants explanation because it entails costs of bank suspension liquidation and idle reserve holdings an explanation is developed in which demandable debt provides incentive compatible intermediation where the banker has comparative advantage in allocating investment funds but may act against the interests of uninformed depositors demandable debt attracts funds by giving depositors an option to force liquidation its usefulness in transacting follows from information sharing between monitors and nonmonitors copyright 1991 by american economic association

bank runs and currency run in a system without a safety net argentina and the tequila shock abstract this paper tests the random withdrawals vs informed based theories of bank runs in the context of the bank panic that took place in argentina as a consequence of the mexican devaluation of december 20 1994 this evidence is unique in several ways it is the case of a contemporary banking system with virtually no explicit safety net a currency board with no deposit insurance scheme and a case in which the bank runs were triggered by a currency run the findings of the paper provide support to the informed based theories and show that depositors are concerned with the impact of a currency run on bank solvency

on freezing depositor funds at financially distressed banks an experimental analysis this article reports an experiment conducted to evaluate the effects of alterations in the terms of repayments to depositors following a liquidity suspension as well as the effect of alterations in the publicity of information about withdrawal behavior on the fragility of distressed banks results indicate that a tough renegotiation stance of protecting depositors who maintain their money in the bank can quite effectively promote stability information provided to depositors regarding past withdrawal behavior weakens the effectiveness of a tough renegotiation policy but reduces fragility somewhat for a more lenient rescheduling condition

experimental evidence of bank runs as pure coordination failures abstract we investigate how coordination requirement measured by the coordination parameter affects the occurrence of miscoordination based bank runs in controlled laboratory environments we identify an indeterminacy region of the coordination parameter such that games with the parameter within the region have varying coordination outcomes and exhibit persistent path dependence experimental economies with the parameter above below the region stay close or converge to the run non run equilibrium switches between the two equilibria occur even with fixed economic fundamentals the experimental results are well accounted for by a version of the evolutionary algorithm that uses experimentation rates estimated from the experimental data

panic bank runs we provide experimental evidence that panic bank runs occur in the absence of problems with fundamentals and coordination failures among depositors the two main culprits identified in the literature depositors withdraw when they observe that others do so even when theoretically they should not our findings suggest that panic also manifests itself in the beliefs of depositors who overestimate the probability that a bank run is underway loss aversion has a predictive power on panic behavior while risk or ambiguity aversion do not

does and should a commodity medium of exchange have relatively low storage costs i provide new existence and welfare results for a version of the kiyotaki wright model i construct an equilibrium where all agents use mixed strategies consequently an object with a higher storage cost must have a higher acceptability therefore the endogenous transaction pattern corresponds to the observation that money is dominated in rate of return by other assets e g bonds something that is a central issue in monetary economics furthermore at least in a neighborhood of equal storage costs the equilibrium that i construct pareto dominates alternative equilibria in which better objects are widely accepted

on the effects of deposit insurance and observability on bank runs an experimental study we study the effects of deposit insurance and observability of previous actions on the emergence of bank runs by means of a controlled laboratory experiment we consider three depositors in the line of a bank who decide between withdrawing or keeping their money deposited we have three treatments with different levels of deposit insurance which reflect the losses a depositor may incur in the case of a bank run we find that different levels of deposit insurance and the possibility of observing other depositors actions affect the likelihood of bank runs when decisions are not observable higher levels of deposit insurance decrease the probability of bank runs when decisions are observable this need not to be the case these results suggest that i observability might be considered as a partial substitute of deposit insurance and ii the optimal deposit insurance should take into account the degree of observability

an experimental exploration of self fulfilling banking panics their occurrence persistence and prevention this article tests the possibility and the degree of persistence of self fulfilling banking panics through an experimental protocol panics are proved to be persistent phenomena that are difficult to prevent however it seems possible to curb them through a learning effect caused by a temporary but sufficient suspension of the deposit availability combined with a narrow banking solution which makes banks more liquid additionally panic prevention requires a full deposit coverage to be effective this suggests that the moral hazard issue should not be tackled through a lower deposit coverage especially in emerging countries banking systems where depositors are likely to lose confidence

contagion and bank failures during the great depression the june 1932 chicago banking panic the authors examine the social costs of asymmetric information induced bank panics in an environment without government deposit insurance their case study is the chicago bank panic of june 1932 the authors compare the ex ante characteristics of panic failures and panic survivors despite temporary confusion about bank asset quality on the part of depositors during the panic which was associated with widespread depositor runs and bank stock price declines the panic did not produce significant social costs in terms of failures among solvent banks copyright 1997 by american economic association

interbank contagion at work evidence from a natural experiment this article tests financial contagion due to interbank linkages for identification we exploit an idiosyncratic sudden shock caused by a large bank failure in conjunction with detailed data on interbank exposures first we find robust evidence that higher interbank exposure to the failed bank leads to large deposit withdrawals second the magnitude of contagion is higher for banks with weaker fundamentals third interbank linkages among surviving banks further propagate the shock finally we find results suggesting that there are real economic effects these results suggest that interbank linkages act as an important channel of contagion and hold important policy implications jel g01 g21 g28 e58 since the onset of the financial turmoil increased uncertainty reflected particularly in counterparty risk has led banks to hoard liquidity this has resulted in a significant decline of trading in the interbank money markets jean claude trichet president of the european central bank december 2008

the returns to currency speculation in emerging markets the carry trade strategy involves selling forward currencies that are at a forward premium and buying forward currencies that are at a forward discount we compare the payoffs to the carry trade applied to two different portfolios the first portfolio consists exclusively of developed country currencies the second portfolio includes the currencies of both developed countries and emerging markets our main empirical findings are as follows first including emerging market currencies in our portfolio substantially increases the sharpe ratio associated with the carry trade second bid ask spreads are two to four times larger in emerging markets than in developed countries third and most dramatically the payoffs to the carry trade for both portfolios are uncorrelated with returns to the u s stock market this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item