0000000000248950
AUTHOR
Oscar Arce
Structural reforms in a debt overhang
We assess the effects of reforms in product and labor markets in a model economy featuring credit restrictions and pre-existing long-term debt. Both elements, which are core features of the current scenario faced by some euro area countries, combine to produce a slow and protracted deleveraging of the private sector and a persistent recession following a negative financial shock. In this environment, we show that product and labor market reforms may stimulate output and employment even in the short run, despite their defl ationary effects. Furthermore, by favoring a faster recovery of investment and collateral values, product market reforms bring forward the end of deleveraging and the exit…
Banking Competition, Housing Prices and Macroeconomic Stability
We develop a dynamic general equilibrium model with an imperfectly competitive bank-loans market and collateral constraints that tie investors credit capacity to the value of their real estate holdings. Banks set optimal lending rates taking into account the effects of their price policies on their market share and on the volume of funds demanded by each customer. Lending margins have a significant effect on aggregate variables. Over the long run, fostering banking competition increases total consumption and output by triggering a reallocation of available collateral towards investors. However, as regards the short-run dynamics, we find that most macroeconomic variables are more responsive …
When Fiscal Consolidation Meets Private Deleveraging
We analyze the interaction between fiscal consolidation and private-sector deleveraging in an economy within a monetary union. Pre-existing long term collateralized private debt – a core ingredient of the deleveraging process – plays a critical role in shaping fiscal multipliers. By buffering the short-run fall in debtors’ spending capacity, long-run private debt reduces the short-run multipliers of aggressive (large and/or fast) consolidations. However, absent credibility concerns, aggressive consolidations raise the intensity and length of private deleveraging, causing higher output losses over the medium run. In terms of discounted output losses and welfare, this latter effect dominates,…
Deciphering the Macroeconomic Effects of Internal Devaluations in a Monetary Union
We study the macroeconomic effects of internal devaluations undertaken by a periphery of countries belonging to a monetary union. We find that internal devaluations have large and positive output effects in the long run. Through an expectations channel, most of these effects carry over to the short run. Internal devaluations focused on goods markets reforms are generally more powerful in stimulating growth than reforms aimed at moderating wages, but the latter are less deflationary. For a monetary union with a periphery the size of the euro area's, the countries at the periphery benefit from internal devaluations even at the zero lower bound (ZLB) of the nominal interest rate. Nevertheless,…
When fiscal consolidation meets private deleveraging
Abstract Inspired by the recent experience in some euro area countries, we analyze the interaction between fiscal consolidation and private deleveraging in a model of a small open economy in a monetary union. The coexistence of long-term private debt and collateral constraints on new loans implies that, following an adverse financial shock, the economy enters a slow private deleveraging process, the duration of which is endogenous to collateral and debt dynamics. In this context, large and/or front-loaded consolidations increase the length and depth of private deleveraging, causing higher relative output losses over the medium run. As a result, such aggressive consolidation strategies entai…
Banking Competition, Collateral Constraints and Optimal Monetary Policy
We analyze optimal monetary policy in a model with two distinct financial frictions. First, borrowing is subject to collateral constraints. Second, credit flows are intermediated by monopolistically competitive banks, thus giving rise to endogenous lending spreads. We show that, up to a second order approximation, welfare maximization is equivalent to stabilization of four goals: inflation, output gap, the consumption gap between constrained and unconstrained agents, and the distribution of the collateralizable asset between both groups. Following both financial and non-financial shocks, the optimal monetary policy commitment implies a short-run trade-off between stabilization goals. Such p…
Market Polarization and the Phillips Curve
The Phillips curve has flattened out over the last decades. We develop a model that rationalizes this phenomenon as a result of the observed increase in polarization in many industries, a process along which a few top firms gain an increasing share of their industry market. In the model, firms compete a la Bertrand and there is exit and endogenous market entry, as well as optimal up and downgrading of technology. Firms with larger market shares find optimal to dampen the response of their price changes, thus cushioning the shocks to their marginal costs through endogenous countercyclical markups. Thus, regardless of its causes (technology, competition, barriers to entry, etc.), the recent i…