Title: Essays on Financial Intermediation and Liquidity
Description: This dissertation studies the demand and supply of liquidity with a particular focus on the financial intermediation sector. The first essay analyzes the role of financial intermediaries as suppliers of inside money. The demand for money arises from the needs of nonfinancial corporations to buffer liquidity shocks. The dynamic interaction between inside money supply and demand gives rise to a mechanism of financial instability that puts the procyclicality of intermediary leverage at the center. Introducing outside money, in the form of government debt, can be counterproductive, as it may amplify the procyclicality of inside money creation and intermediary leverage, making booms more fragile and crises more stagnant. The second essay addresses an issue that is left out in the first essay -- the interaction between money and credit. It offers a model of macroeconomy where intermediaries are needed for both money and credit creation. Specifically, entrepreneurs hold money to finance new projects, while intermediaries issue money backed by investments in existing projects.

The complementarity between money and credit arises from financial frictions and amplifies economic fluctuations. In the third essay, my coauthors and I model the liquidity demand of banks. To buffer liquidity shocks, banks hold central bank reserves and can borrow reserves from each other. The propagation of liquidity shocks, depend on the topology of interbank credit network, but more importantly, on the type of equilibrium on the network (strategic complementarity vs. substitution). The model is estimated using data on reserves, interbank credit, bank balance sheets, and macroeconomic variables. We propose a method to identify banks that contribute the most to systemic risk, and offer policy guidance by comparing the decentralized outcome with the choice of a benevolent planner.