Anton Korinek

Systemic Risk-Taking: Amplification Effects, Externalities, and Regulatory Responses

This paper develops a simple macroeconomic model of systemic risk in the form of financial accelerator effects: adverse developments in financial markets and in the real economy mutually reinforce each other and lead to a feedback cycle of falling asset prices, deteriorating balance sheets and tightening financing conditions. We show that decentralized agents choose to expose themselves to financial accelerator effects to a socially inefficient extent and do not take on sufficient insurance against systemic risk even if given access to a complete ex-ante insurance market. We use the framework to shed light on a number of current policy issues: First, we develop a new analytical framework of macro-prudential capital adequacy requirements that take into account systemic risk by employing an externality pricing kernel. Second, we show that agents employ ex-ante risk markets to fully undo any expected government bailout. Finally, we find that constrained market participants face socially insufficient incentives to raise more capital during systemic crises.

Regulating Capital Flows to Emerging Markets: An Externality View

We show that capital flows to emerging market economies create externalities that differ by an order of magnitude depending on the state-contingent payoff profile of the flows. Those with pro-cyclical payoffs, such as foreign currency debt, generate substantial negative pecuniary externalities because they lead to large repayments and contractionary exchange rate depreciations during financial crises. Conversely, capital flows with an insurance component, such as FDI or equity, are largely benign. We construct an externality pricing kernel and use sufficient statistics and DSGE model simulations to quantify the externalities that materialized during past financial crises. We find stark differences depending on the payoff profile, justifying taxes of up to 3% for dollar debt but close to zero for FDI. These findings contrast with the existing literature, which has suggested that policymakers should focus on reducing over-borrowing rather than changing the composition of external liabilities.

Excessive Dollar Borrowing in Emerging Markets: Balance Sheet Effects and Macroeconomic Externalities

Emerging market economies that borrow in foreign currency are prone to severe financial crises that involve financial amplification, i.e. a feedback loop of depreciating exchange rates, deteriorating balance sheets and declining aggregate demand. This is the first paper to show that such financial amplification effects create an externality that induces individual borrowers to undervalue the social risks of dollar debt and take on too much of it. Specifically, atomistic rational agents take the extent of exchange rate depreciations during crises as given. They realize that foreign currency debt entails large repayments and cut-backs in spending in crisis states, but they do not internalize that the resulting reduction in aggregate demand leads to further depreciations in the exchange rate. These depreciations in turn deteriorate balance sheets and tighten borrowing constraints across the economy, hurting other borrowers. We discuss the merits of various policy measures to correct this distortion and conclude that a reserve requirement on foreign currency debt is the most desirable.

The New Economics of Capital Controls Imposed for Prudential Reasons+L4888

This paper provides an introduction to the new economics of prudential capital controls in emerging economies. This literature is based on the notion that there are externalities associated with financial crises because individual market participants do not internalize their contribution to aggregate financial instability when they make their finacing decisions. As a result they impose externalities in the form of greater financial instability on each other, and the private financing decisions of individuals are distorted towards excessive risk-taking. We discuss how prudential capital controls can induce private agents to internalize these externalities and thereby increase macroeconomic stability and enhance welfare.

Capital Controls or Macroprudential Regulation

International capital flows can create significant financial instability in emerging economies because of pecuniary externalities associated with exchange rate movements. Does this make it optimal to impose capital controls or should policymakers rely on domestic macroprudential regulation? This paper presents a tractable model to show that it is desirable to employ both types of instruments: Macroprudential regulation reduces overborrowing, while capital controls increase the aggregate net worth of the economy as a whole by also stimulating savings. The two policy measures should be set higher the greater an economys debt burden and the higher domestic inequality. In our baseline calibration based on the East Asian crisis countries, we find optimal capital controls and macroprudential regulation in the magnitude of 2 percent. In advanced countries where the risk of sharp exchange rate depreciations is more limited, the role for capital controls subsides. However, macroprudential regulation remains essential to mitigate booms and busts in asset prices.

Thoughts on DSGE Macroeconomics: Matching the Moment, But Missing the Point?

This article critically evaluates the benefits and costs of the dominant methodology in macroeconomics, the DSGE approach. Although the approach has led to great progress in some areas, I argue that its conceptual restrictions, numerical methods, and the resulting complexity have created biases that risk holding back progress in macroeconomics. There is great scope for making renewed progress by judiciously pushing the boundaries of some of these methodological restrictions. A richer set of methodologies would also make macroeconomics more robust and better prepared for new challenges in understanding and governing our economies.

Currency Wars or Efficient Spillovers? A General Theory of International Policy Cooperation

In an interconnected world, national economic policies regularly lead to large international spillover effects, which frequently trigger calls for international policy cooperation. However, the premise of successful cooperation is that there is a Pareto inefficiency, i.e. if there is scope to make some nations better off without hurting others. This paper presents a first welfare theorem for open economies that defines an efficient benchmark and spells out the conditions that need to be violated to generate inefficiency and scope for cooperation. These are: (i) policymakers act competitively in the international market, (ii) policymakers have sufficient external policy instruments and (iii) international markets are free of imperfections. Our theorem holds even if each economy suffers from a wide range of domestic market imperfections and targeting problems. We provide examples of current account intervention, monetary policy, fiscal policy, macroprudential policy/capital controls, and exchange rate management and show that the resulting spillovers are Pareto efficient, as long as the three conditions are satisfied. Furthermore, we develop general guidelines for how policy cooperation can improve welfare when the conditions are violated.

Capital Flows, Crises, and Externalities

Emerging economies frequently experience episodes of large capital inflows. In the mid-2000s for example, global financial markets were flush with liquidity. Many emerging economies had better short-term growth prospects than advanced countries and became an attractive destination for global investors. Large capital inflows, or ‘capital flow bonanzas’ in the terminology of Reinhart and Reinhart (2008), pushed up real exchange rates and inflated asset prices in the countries affected. The ensuing rise in purchasing power and in the value of domestic assets that could serve as collateral fueled a large increase in indebtedness.