dynamic banking a reconsideration financially intermediated and stock market consumption investment allocations with and without governmental interventions are compared in a welfare sense in overlapping generation economies with and without shocks to agents intertemporal preferences we first show that in economies with preference shocks governmental interventions subject to the same information requirements as those imposed on financial intermediaries lead to stock market allocations that are not inferior to those attained under financial intermediation second we argue that the necessary interventions are qualitatively no different from those required to implement stationary optimal allocations in olg models without shocks to agents intertemporal consumption preferences

introduction to the symposium on growth fluctuations and sunspots confronting the data the papers in this symposium demonstrate the theoretical as well as the empirical plausibility of indeterminacy and of sunspots in equilibrium models with infinitely lived agents they depart from the standard competitive framework because of the presence of externalities or of monopolistic competition some focus on business fluctuations while others address long run growth the second part of the introduction presents a general unifying framework to identify the structure that is common to the papers of the symposium journal of economic literature classification numbers e00 e3 o40 c 1994 academic press inc

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

monopolistic competition endogenous markups and growth markup variations brought about by changing demand conditions can have a significant impact on the growth dynamics of imperfectly competitive economies they can generate multiple steady states as well as multiple equilibrium paths for given initial conditions we illustrate that result in the context of two alternative models in the first model equilibrium markups depend on the aggregate savings rate in the second model the markup level varies with the range of intermediate goods available we discuss some of the empirical implications of the class of models introduced in the paper

the high cost of incompletely funding the fslic shortage of explicit capital a useful parallel can be drawn between the alaskan oil spill of 1989 and the flood of red ink spilled in recent years by u s thrift institutions savings and loan associations and savings banks in each case initial damage from the spill was severely compounded by delaying and mishandling the clean up required for more than a decade federal officials refused to acknowledge that the thrift ink spill had compromised the integrity of the supporting deposit insurance fund instead of promptly shoring up the finances of this fund officials used accounting smoke and mirrors to cover up the fund s secularly increasing capital shortage this prolonged refusal to face up to the magnitude of the underfunding imposed enormous costs on society as a whole

bank liquidity and stability in an overlapping generations model in an infinitely repeated version of the diamond and dybvig 1983 model intergenerational transfers enable a bank to achieve interest rate smoothing and to provide depositors with liquidity insurance without diamond and dybvig s assumption of no side trades the bank is subject to runs that may result from either excessive withdrawals or the lack of new deposits the latter cause which cannot occur in diamond and dybvig s one generation model implies that suspension of convertibility may not prevent bank runs government intervention may be necessary to maintain bank stability article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

an expository note on individual risk without aggregate uncertainty abstract in economies where agents bear some risk the analysis would often be facilitated by the assumption that the risks are i i d and disappear in the aggregate a formal appeal to the law of large numbers requires the consideration of a sequence of finite economies in an economy with a continuum of agents there are countable families of sets for which it is impossible for a law of large numbers to be valid with countably many agents and a finitely additive measure independence is compatible with the law of large numbers

banking as the provision of liquidity this article represents a model economy in which demand deposits represent the optimal financial intermediation because these demand deposits are backed in part by an illiquid asset the in termediary bank is subject to panics in which each agent ration ally decides to withdraw his deposits making all worse off banks ca n prevent panics only through a distortion of the optimal contract t he government can prevent panics without this distortion by guarantee ing the return from deposits the moral hazard introduced by this dep osit insurance induces the government to regulate the intermediary s portfolio and returns copyright 1988 by the university of chicago

international migration non traded goods and economic welfare in the source country abstract this paper examines the economic effects of emigration in a source country producing both traded and non traded commodities it is shown that even if the economy faces fixed terms of trade emigration can still affect the welfare of the non migrants and the direction of the effect in this context will always be negative

financial contagion and depositor monitoring this paper analyzes market discipline in a many bank economy where contagion and bank runs interact we present a model with differently informed depositors where those depositors that are more informed have incentives to monitor banks investments it is shown that when banks are undercapitalized and the probability of success of the risky asset is low depositors might prefer a contract that is subject to bank runs in the interim period to a contract that allows banks to gamble with their funds and maintain their investment the results of the paper emphasize the benefits of private monitoring of banks in order to promote market discipline

interprovincial migration and the stringency of energy policy in china the authors thank eni s p a icf international shell international limited and the french development agency afd founding sponsors of the china energy and climate project we also gratefully acknowledge the support of the energy information administration at the u s department of energy we are also thankful for support provided by the ministry of science and technology of china the national development and reform commission and rio tinto china we further gratefully acknowledge the financial suppo rt for this work provided by the mit joint program on the science and policy of global change through a consortium of industrial sponsors and federal grants this work is also supported by the doe integrated assessment grant de fg02 94er61937

stationary sunspot equilibria in a finance constrained economy abstract stationary sunspot equilibria are shown to exist in a production economy with infinite lived agents when it is not possible to borrow against future wage income equilibrium fluctuations exhibit persistence over time scales of the same order of magnitude as observed business cycles an active fiscal policy that stabilizes aggregate money expenditures can prevent such fluctuations

uniqueness and indeterminacy on the dynamics of endogenous growth abstract in this paper we study the dynamics of endogenous growth both in the model of lucas and in a generalization that incorporates a labor leisure choice we characterize the regions of the parameter space that give rise to unique equilibria as well as the regions that yield a continuum of equilibria with positive growth rates we find that such multiple equilibria exist for empirically very plausible parameters in particular when the lucas model is modified to incorporate endogenous labor journal of economic literature numbers e00 e3 o40

the design of monetary and fiscal policy a global perspective abstract we study the emergence of multiple equilibria in models with capital and bonds under various monetary and fiscal policies we show that the presence of capital is indeed another independent source of local and global multiplicities even under active policies that yield local determinacy we also show how a very similar mechanism generates multiplicities in models with bonds and distortionary taxation we then explore the design of monetary policies that avoid multiple equilibria we show that interest rate policies that respond to the output gap while potentially a source of significant inefficiencies may be effective in preventing multiple equilibria and costly oscillatory equilibrium dynamics

the welfare costs of self fulfilling bank runs we study the welfare implications of self fulfilling bank runs and liquidity require ments in a neoclassical growth model where banks facing long lasting possible runs can choose in any period a run proof asset portfolio in this framework runs distort banks insurance provision against idiosyncratic liquidity shocks and liquidity requirements re solve this distortion by forcing a credit tightening quantitatively the welfare costs of self fulfilling bank runs are equivalent to a constant consumption loss of up to 2 5 percent of u s gdp depending on fundamentals liquidity requirements might generate small welfare gains but also increase the welfare costs by up to 1 8 percent

what s different about banks abstract negotiable certificates of deposit cd s trade in the capital market in competition with other securities like commercial paper and bankers acceptances if cd s must pay lenders competitive monetary interest the reserve tax on cd s is borne by bank borrowers viability of the tax means there must be something special about bank loans that makes some borrowers willing to pay higher interest rates than those on other securities of equivalent risk moreover there must be something special about banks that prevents other intermediaries from competing to assure that it never pays to finance loans with cd s

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

the term structure of investment and the banks insurance function abstract the article re examines the proposition first formulated rigorously by bryant a model of reserves bank runs and deposit insurance journal of banking and finance 4 335 344 1980 and diamond and dybvig bank runs deposit insurance and liquidity journal of political economy 91 401 419 1983 that in a production economy with stochastic liquidity shocks to the household sector banks serve to provide optimal intertemporal insurance to consumers the paper argues that in order to understand the moral hazard problems inherent in this insurance problem it is too narrow to consider solely the role of banks as providers of liquidity the paper develops a model with several investment opportunities in which banks have the additional function of asset diversification this pooling of intermediation functions is shown to reduce the moral hazard problem thereby enhancing the stability of depository contracts and increasing the scope of the banks insurance function

bank runs as an equilibrium phenomenon a standard demand deposit contract in which individuals are entitled to their full deposit at any time provided the bank is solvent is analyzed in a context in which there are no exogenous events on which agents condition their behavior and a unique equilibrium involving a bank run with positive probability is shown to exist

emigration and welfare in an economy with foreign capital abstract this paper examines the effects of emigration on welfare of the remaining residents r in an economy producing traded t and non traded n goods with the aid of foreign and domestic capital while the existing literature has established that emigration reduces the welfare of those left behind when foreign capital is not present in the economy the analysis below suggests that with foreign capital the effect on welfare may well be reversed the paper also compares the welfare implications of remittance flows back to the source country when they are used to finance consumption and when they are used to finance capital accumulation

balanced budget rules distortionary taxes and aggregate instability a traditional argument against a balanced budget fiscal policy rule is that it amplifies business cycles by stimulating aggregate demand during booms via tax cuts and higher public expenditures and by reducing demand during recessions through a corresponding fiscal contraction this paper suggests an additional source of instability that may arise from this type of fiscal policy rule it shows that within the standard neoclassical growth model a balanced budget rule can make expectations of higher tax rates self fulfilling if the fiscal authority relies heavily on changes in labor income taxes to eliminate short run fiscal imbalances calibrated versions of the model show that indeterminacy occurs for income tax rates that are empirically plausible for the u s economy and other group of seven countries

stabilizing competitive business cycles abstract we study how stylized monetary proportional money transfers fiscal lump sum money transfers and public expenditure policies may eliminate endogenous deterministic cycles and stationary markov sunspot equilibria in a simple version of the overlapping generations model we also present new constructive methods for analyzing stationary markov sunspot equilibria in such a framework

international migration income taxes and transfers a welfare analysis abstract an important issue in public policy debates is the effect of international migration on welfare in source and host countries we address this issue by constructing a general equilibrium model of a two class source or host country each country produces many traded and non traded goods uses income taxes and distributes the tax receipts equally to all individuals the analysis examines the effects of permanent migration on class and national welfare we show among other things that marginal immigration hurts people already in the country regardless of whether or not non traded goods exist the presence of international capital mobility however may reverse the above result

monetary policy under alternative bank market structures abstract the purpose of this paper is to derive and compare the short run effects of monetary policy under both perfectly and imperfectly competitive banking markets within the context of a general equilibrium framework which emphasizes the demands for and supplies of financial assets it is demonstrated that the structure of banking markets can have a bearing on the appropriate choice of policy targets and instruments specifically the federal funds rate is shown to be a potentially ineffective target instrument for policy under a competitive banking system although it can be used to produce conventional short run effects when banking markets are imperfect in contrast the level of currency and unborrowed reserves can be utilized as an effective target instrument under either form of bank market structure

the future of world oil prices smooth growth or volatility abstract most oil price projections since 1974 and until recently have shown smooth growth this contrasts with actual developments in particular the recent collapse of world crude oil prices which surprised both policymakers and analysts this paper discusses different approaches and paradigms for price projections and for rationalizing past oil price movements in particular the explicit consideration of the dynamics of the energy markets ie the sluggish behaviour of both consumers and competitive fringe producers provides a suitable framework for explaining the recent evolution this framework suggests that considerable price volatility will characterize the future world oil market

monopolistic competition business cycles and the composition of aggregate demand abstract we develop a dynamic general equilibrium model with monopolistically competitive firms and endogenous markups and show the possibility of equilibria with persistent fluctuations driven by self fulfilling revisions of expectations for some parameter values such fluctuations are characterized by time series properties similar to those observed in u s postwar business cycles in contrast with the existing literature our results do not rely on the presence of increasing returns or nominal rigidities a key ingredient of the model is the link between markups and the composition of aggregate demand some econometric evidence on the latter is also reported journal of economic literature classification number d43 d58 e32

indeterminacy and increasing returns abstract we investigate properties of the one sector growth model with increasing returns under two organizational structures capable of reconciling the existence of aggregate increasing returns with competitive behavior by firms the first involves input externalities the second involves monopolistic competition we show for parameters in close accord with recent literature on real business cycles that the model displays an indeterminate steady state that can be exploited to generate a model of business fluctuations driven by self fulfilling beliefs in our first class of models growth is generated by exogenous increases in factor productivity in the second class the marginal product of capital is large enough for endogenous growth journal of economic literature classification numbers e00 e3 o40

decentralized income redistribution and immigration abstract we analyze the welfare and other effects of immigration on a system of jurisdictions with a common labor market mobile capital and redistributive tax transfer policies comparative statics analysis of a model of nash non cooperative equilibria in tax transfer policies shows that the welfare effect of immigration depends on whether immigrants are net fiscal contributors or burdens any one jurisdiction s redistribution and immigration policies generate fiscal externalities for others in the system which a central government can internalize by appropriate taxes and subsidies

why do rich countries prefer free trade over free migration the role of the modern welfare state abstract according to traditional trade theory heckscher ohlin free trade and free migration are equivalent measures of economic integration leading both to an equalization of factor prices this prediction is in sharp opposition to the observed preference of rich countries for free trade over free migration we provide an explanation for this inconsistency the redistribution policies in the countries social welfare in countries with a relatively small number of low skilled native workers is higher with free trade than with free migration due to redistribution of income towards immigrating workers

chaos sunspots and automatic stabilizers abstract we consider a real business cycle model with an externality in production depending on parameter values the model has sunspot equilibria cyclical and chaotic equilibria and equilibria with deterministic or stochastic regime switching we study the implications of this model environment for automatic stabilizer tax systems stabilization is desirable because the efficient allocations are characterized by constant employment and output growth we identify an automatic stabilizer income tax subsidy schedule with two properties i it specifies the tax rate to be an increasing function of aggregate employment and ii earnings are subsidized when aggregate employment is at its efficient level the first feature eliminates inefficient fluctuating equilibria while the second induces agents to internalize the externality

on endogenous competitive business cycles the belief that the long run equilibrium of a competitive monetary economy that does not experience any exogeneous shocks whether originating from the external environment or from policy should be modelled as a state that is stationary or perhaps growing at a constant rate seems to be deeply rooted in the mind of some economists

bank collapse and depression the recurrent banking panics of the 19th century and the great depression of the 1930s are widely viewed as failures of our economic system a simple version of samuelson s overlapping generations model is used to generate such failures of walrasian equilibrium the spontaneous panics generated involve a collapse of bank credit causing in turn a drop in investment demand the model suggests that both the recent technological advances in the intermediation industry and the current move towards deregulation of that industry are ominous developments

models of resource markets and the explanation of resource price behaviour abstract much of the recent theoretical work in resource economics has been aimed at relaxing the stringent simplifying assumptions of the basic hotelling model in an attempt to better explain observed resource price behaviour this paper surveys the characteristics of exhaustible resource markets that are likely to be important for the development of successful positive models in particular we discuss exploration and its relationship to production and market price the effects of various forms of uncertainty on price behaviour and for some resources the treatment of durability finally we address the question of whether producer behaviour can properly be viewed as that of dynamic optimization this paper should be seen as an attempt to stimulate discussion over research directions and priorities in resource economics

capital markets financial intermediaries and liquidity supply abstract we study a dynamic economy endowed with a sequence of overlapping generations of consumers and production processes and where productive assets are illiquid and consumption preferences are subject to uninsurable demand for liquidity we characterize the steady states that can be achieved with alternative financial systems we show that infinitely lived financial intermediaries offering a liability with age dependent restrictions may implement a social optimum with full insurance if instead they offer anonymous unrestricted contracts then only second best consumption allocations with partial insurance obtain we also examine the consumption allocations available when agents can trade shares in competitive stock markets while allowing for trade across generations may or may not improve upon generational autarky we show that this competitive equilibrium is not a social optimum and is dominated by a system of infinitely lived unrestricted intermediaries

active intermediation in a monetary overlapping generations economy abstract this paper establishes that the profit seeking activities of private intermediaries can ensure pareto efficiency in the standard pure exchange monetary overlapping generations economy without the need for government monetary or fiscal policy intervention moreover these profit seeking activities are shown to rule out all aperiodic and k periodic cycles for k greater than 2 contrary to much recent work on intermediation the profit opportunities that arise for intermediaries in this context are not due to assumed frictions or asymmetric information rather they are due to the dynamic open ended structure of the economy which permits debt roll over

opec behavior a test of alternative hypotheses since interpretations of past and future oil price patterns depends on the model chosen the author tests and compares alternative theories of opec as a first step in validating the choice on any one model the results show that among opec countries the partial market sharing cartel model is the only model not rejected by at least some of the 11 members and gives the best explanation of production in comparison with 11 non opec countries the competitive model could not be rejected for 10 of the 11 non opec producers this raises the question of why if opec is a cartel friedman s predictions have not come true and introduces new questions for future research 19 references 3 tables

overlapping generations intermediation and the first welfare theorem abstract the first welfare theorem fails to hold for standard pure exchange overlapping generations economies because no agent exploits the profit opportunities which can arise from mediating intertemporal trade this paper modifies the standard economy by introducing an optimizing corporate intermediary which distributes net earnings back to consumer shareholders the pareto inefficient no trade state which is a stationary equilibrium for the standard economy cannot be an equilibrium for this modified brokerage economy because the intermediary perceives unbounded earnings opportunities if the intermediary seeks to maximize the minimum dividend per share distributed over time then there is a unique pareto efficient stationary equilibrium for the brokerage economy

multiple equilibria in dynamic rational expectations models a critical review abstract multiple equilibria are a ubiquitous feature of dynamic rational expectations models researchers have been divided on the implications of this phenomenon some have viewed this as a reflection of reality and a possible explanation of a wide range of economic phenomena others have suggested various selection criteria for choosing one among the many equilibria this paper reviews the major selection criteria that have been proposed and through application to three well known models shows under what circumstances one might expect them to choose the same or different equilibria in addition this paper proposes a new criteria based on the limit of finite horizon equilibria and investigates its relation to the other criteria

dynamic externalities multiple equilibria and growth abstract i consider an olg model with production and a single commodity i show that in such an environment unbounded growth of income per capita is not possible if the aggregate technology is of the constant returns to scale type i introduce an external effect in the aggregate production function and derive conditions under which persistent growth is an equilibrium outcome the introduction of an external effect also creates poverty traps and open sets of initial conditions for which there exists an infinite multiplicity of equilibria when such a multiplicity exists equilibria with the same initial position will display different asymptotic behaviors finally i show that by introducing appropriate tax schemes a unique equilibrium path can be selected

exhaustible resource models and predictions of crude oil prices some preliminary results abstract despite rapid growth in the theoretical and empirical literature on opec following the 1973 1974 oil price explosion few systematic attempts have been made to test opec structure from an industrial organization point of view this paper presents some preliminary results on the construction of the framework of such tests and their applications each hypothesis about opec structure will have testable implications on the price path and the derivation of these implications from a simple intertemporal maximization model of exhaustible resources and the comparison of the implied price time paths with the actual ones will present a preliminary test for the structure of this organization the model compares four structures pure competition pure monopoly dominant firm saudi arabia and dominant core iran and saudi arabia of which the dominant core structure is selected as the most likely

shopping externalities and self fulfilling unemployment fluctuations we propose a novel theory of self fulfilling fluctuations in the labor market a firm employing an additional worker generates positive externalities on other firms because employed workers have more income to spend and have less time to shop for low prices than unemployed workers we quantify these shopping externalities and show that they are sufficiently strong to create s complementarities in the employment decisions of different firms and to generate multiple rational expectations equilibria equilibria differ with respect to agents rational expectations about future unemployment we show that negative shocks to agents expectations lead to fluctuations in vacancies unemployment labor productivity and the stock market that closely resemble those observed in the us during the great recession

financial structure and aggregate economic activity an overview this paper surveys literature that explores the possible links between the financial system and aggregate economic behavior the survey is in two parts the first reviews the traditional work and the second discusses new research copyright 1988 by ohio state university press

financial system design and liquidity provision by banks and markets in a dynamic economy this paper contributes to the literature on financial system design by comparing markets and banks in a dynamic economy investors trade off their liquidity needs against the high returns on illiquid investments both the banking system and the market can provide partial liquidity insurance to investors we consider full market participation as well as limited market participation we demonstrate that the full participation market with intergenerational trading can provide more liquidity than one without insurance is provided through wealth transfer across generations instead of cross subsidization across contemporaneous types as is the case in the finite economy given a full participation market that allows trading across generations only banks with initial capital can provide additional liquidity in a limited participation market with uncertainty about trading types an intergenerational bank with or without initial capital provides additional insurance to investors the need for trade is eliminated finally if there is no uncertainty about trading types then an intergenerational bank with initial capital eliminates the need for trading and improves welfare for all an intergenerational bank without initial capital improves welfare for people who do not trade

on generalizing the economic analysis of international migration a note the author critically examines an article by kar yui wong concerning two important well known propositions on international factor movements namely first finite international factor movements are beneficial to the nationals of the destination country but detrimental to those who are left behind in the source country and second marginal movements do not have such welfare implications the present paper by utilizing the indirect trade utility function derives results in a manner that is both direct and at once intuitively transparent

financial markets intermediaries and intertemporal smoothing in an overlapping generations economy with incomplete financial markets but no intermediaries there is underinvestment in safe assets in an economy with intermediaries and no financial markets accumulating reserves of safe assets allows returns to be smoothed nondiversifiable risk to be eliminated and an ex ante pareto improvement compared to the allocation in the market equilibrium to be achieved in a mixed financial system however competition from financial markets constrains intermediaries so that they perform no better than markets alone

financial intermediation in an overlapping generations model with transaction costs abstract we analyze an overlapping generations economy where agents interact to share liquidity risk we show that a pure exchange economy has excessive trade in equilibrium because agents interact to rebalance their portfolios intergenerational financial intermediaries reduce the number of interactions because agents only transact when they face liquidity needs in the absence of asset risk intermediaries match redemptions with deposits and dividends and never sell assets if the economy is subject to transaction costs the intermediated economy can sustain higher stationary investment and welfare we also find that dead weight transaction costs can increase welfare because it protects banks from interbank arbitrage and dampens the inherent cyclicality of market economies

banking and insurance abstract this paper studies the economic role of financial institutions in economies where agents incomes are subject to privately observable idiosyncratic random events the information structure precludes conventional insurance arrangements however a financial institution perhaps best viewed as a savings bank can provide partial insurance by generating a time pattern of deposit returns that redistributes wealth from agents with high incomes to those with low incomes resulting in a level of expected utility higher than that achievable in simple security markets insurance is incomplete because the bank faces a tradeoff between provision of insurance and maintenance of private incentives

the economic analysis of international migration a generalization this note examines and extends the following two propositions that finite international factor movements are beneficial to the nationals of the destination country but detrimental to those left behind in the source country and that marginal movements do not have such welfare effects using some newly developed techniques the propositions are found to be valid irrespective of the number of goods and factors if the economy starts from the autarky position when only one factor can flow the gain of the nationals loss of those left behind will be positively dependent upon the amount of inflow outflow however if goods trade and or factor flow are initially present the propositions are in general not true summary in fre excerpt

optimal capacity in the banking sector and economic growth the paper investigates from the welfare and growth point of view the determination of the optimal capacity of the banking system for that purpose we consider an overlapping generation model with endogenous growth there is horizontal differentiation and imperfect competition in the banking sector macroeconomic shocks affect the return on capital and together with the expectations of depositors condition the stability of the banking sector we specify to what extent deposit insurance may reduce instability and increase the number of deposits welfare and growth we also characterize the conditions under which excess banking capacities may appear and how their reduction may improve welfare

liquidity creation through banks and markets multiple insurance and limited market access abstract the paper studies the intertemporal allocation of funds through demand deposits and anonymous markets first separately and then in an integrated model it reviews some work on the role of market frictions and asset characteristics and suggests that the interplay between these two is crucial in explaining the observed coexistence of demand deposits and anonymous markets

banking recession depression and government expenditure we examine public good expenditure given a stylized business cycle this cycle exhibits three characteristics a a full employment path b occasional drops from that path followed by reconvergence and c sustained underemployment following a large drop a banking system modeled using samuelson s overlapping generations approach propagates shocks two sources of shocks are treated anticipated future shocks to technology and inherent instability of the banking system both of which precipitate shocks to demand we conclude that under gross substitutes the government acting as competitive purchasing agent follows countercyclical policy

the fragility of short term secured funding markets abstract this paper develops an infinite horizon model of financial institutions that borrow short term and invest in long term assets that can be traded in frictionless markets because these financial intermediaries perform maturity transformation they are subject to potential runs we derive distinct liquidity collateral and asset liquidation constraints which determine whether a run can occur as a result of changing market expectations we show that the extent to which borrowers can ward off an individual run depends on whether it has sufficient liquidity collateral and asset liquidation capacity these determinants depend on the borrower s endogenous balance sheet and on exogenous fundamentals systemic runs are possible if shocks to the valuation of collateral held by outside investors are sufficiently strong and uniform and if the system as a whole is exposed to high short term funding risk the theory has policy implications for prudential regulation and lender of last resort interventions

real business cycles and the animal spirits hypothesis abstract we calibrate a quantitative equilibrium macroeconomic model with an aggregate technology that is subject to increasing returns and show that this model may display fluctuations at business cycle frequencies even when there are no shocks to the fundamentals of the economy these fluctuations are due to the self fulfilling beliefs of investors which we call animal spirits we compare the impulse response functions predicted by our model and by two other more standard models with a four variable vector autoregression on u s data our animal spirits economy is the most successful of the three at matching broad features of the dynamic responses in the data journal of economic literature classification numbers e00 e3 e32

on the stability of the two sector neoclassical growth model with externalities we study a class of two sector growth models with sector specific externalities in which one sector produces consumption and the other sector produces investment the novelty is that investment allocated to the consumption sector is an imperfect substitute for investment allocated to the investment sector we show analytically that in this case local indeterminacy near the steady state is impossible for every empirically plausible specification of the model parameters more specifically we show that a necessary condition for local indeterminacy is an upward sloping aggregate labor demand curve in the investment sector which requires a counterfactual strength of the externality we show numerically that an elasticity of substitution of plausible size implies determinacy near the steady state these findings differ sharply from the standard result for two sector models that if the investments allocated to the two sectors are perfect substitutes then local indeterminacy occurs for a wide range of plausible parameter values

resisting migration wage rigidity and income distribution like any trade activity migration tends to generate gains to all parties involved the migrants as well as the native born population with a mal functioning labour market however migration will exacerbate the imperfections in the market consequently it may lead to losses to the native born population which are typically quite sizeable another economic problem raised by migration is the additional toll imposed on the welfare state income distribution institutions being unable to exclude migrants from the various entitlement programmes and public services the modern welfare state can find migration rather costly these two economic considerations may help explain the resistance to migration despite the pure gains from trade benefits created by it immigration could be more beneficial to the native born population when labour markets are better functioning and the welfare programmes are less comprehensive this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item