0000000000004855
AUTHOR
Iryna Stewen
Holes in the Dike: the global savings glut, U.S. house prices and the long shadow of banking deregulation
We explore empirically how capital inflows into the US and financial deregulation within the United States interacted in driving the run-up (and subsequent decline) in US housing prices over the period 1990-2010. To obtain an ex ante measure of financial liberalization, we focus on the history of interstate-banking deregulation during the 1980s, i.e. prior to the large net capital inflows into the US from China and other emerging economies. Our results suggest a long shadow of deregulation: in states that opened their banking markets to out-of-state banks earlier, house prices were more sensitive to capital inflows. We provide evidence that global imbalances were a major positive funding sh…
Holes in the Dike: The Global Savings Glut, U.S. House Prices and the Long Shadow of Banking Deregulation
We explore empirically how capital inflows into the US and financial deregulation within the United States interacted in driving the run-up (and subsequent decline) in US housing prices over the period 1990-2010. To obtain an ex ante measure of financial liberalization, we focus on the history of interstate-banking deregulation during the 1980s, i.e. prior to the large net capital inflows into the US from China and other emerging economies. Our results suggest a long shadow of deregulation: in states that opened their banking markets to out-of-state banks earlier, house prices were more sensitive to capital inflows. We provide evidence that global imbalances were a major positive funding sh…
Growing Like Germany: Local Public Debt, Local Banks, Low Private Investment
The paper uses a panel of more than 1m German firms over 2010-2016, to provide the first firm-bank level evidence of local crowding out for a developed economy characterized by low interest rates and fiscal austerity. Our mechanism relies on two structural features of Germany's banking landscape: the local segmentation of credit markets for small and medium-sized firms (SME) and the role of local public banks in local public finance. Local public banks dominate lending to small and medium firms in Germany and also have an explicit mandate to lend to the local public sector. With spreads on local government debt at all-time lows, local public banks tried to break even, using their market pow…