Thomas M. Eisenbach

Macroeconomics with Financial Frictions: A Survey

This article surveys the macroeconomic implications of financial frictions. Financial frictions lead to persistence and when combined with illiquidity to non-linear amplification effects. Risk is endogenous and liquidity spirals cause financial instability. Increasing margins further restrict leverage and exacerbate downturns. A demand for liquid assets and a role for money emerges. The market outcome is generically not even constrained efficient and the issuance of government debt can lead to a Pareto improvement. While financial institutions can mitigate frictions, they introduce additional fragility and through their erratic money creation harm price stability.

Stability of Funding Models: An Analytical Framework

Using information on bonds issued over the 1985-2009 period, this study finds that the largest banks have a funding advantage over their smaller peers. This advantage may not be entirely attributable to investors’ belief that the largest banks are “too big to fail,” because the study also finds that the largest nonbanks, as well as the largest nonfinancial corporations, have a cost advantage relative to their smaller peers. However, a comparison across the three groups reveals that the funding advantage enjoyed by the largest banks is significantly larger than that available to the largest nonbanks and nonfinancial corporations. This difference is consistent with the hypothesis that investors believe the largest banks to be too big to fail.

Rollover Risk as Market Discipline: A Two-Sided Inefficiency

Why does the market discipline that financial intermediaries face seem too weak during booms and too strong during crises? This paper shows in a general equilibrium setting that rollover risk as a disciplining device is effective only if all intermediaries face purely idiosyncratic risk. However, if assets are correlated, a two-sided inefficiency arises: Good aggregate states have intermediaries taking excessive risks, while bad aggregate states suffer from costly fire sales. The driving force behind this inefficiency is an amplifying feedback loop between asset values and market discipline. In equilibrium, financial intermediaries inefficiently amplify both positive and negative aggregate shocks.

Asset Pricing with Horizon-Dependent Risk Aversion

We study general equilibrium asset prices in a multi-period endowment economy when agents’ risk aversion is allowed to depend on the maturity of the risk. We find horizon-dependent risk aversion preferences generate a decreasing term structure of risk premia if and only if volatility is stochastic. Our model can thus justify the recent empirical results on the term structure of risk premia if i) the pricing of volatility risk is downward slopping (in absolute value) in the data; and ii) downward-sloping term structures of returns on a given market are solely driven by exposures to volatility risk. We test these predictions both using index options data and by showing that the value premium is related to the exposure to volatility risk.We propose a model that addresses two fundamental challenges concerning the timing and pricing of uncertainty: established equilibrium asset pricing models require a controversial degree of preference for early resolution of uncertainty and do not generate the downward-sloping term structure of risk premia suggested by the data. Inspired by experimental evidence, we construct dynamically inconsistent preferences in which risk aversion decreases with the temporal horizon. The resulting pricing model can generate a term structure of risk premia consistent with empirical evidence, without forcing a particular preference for resolution of uncertainty or compromising the ability to match standard moments.

The Term Structure of the Price of Variance Risk

We estimate the term structure of the price of variance risk (PVR), which helps distinguish between competing asset-pricing theories. First, we measure the PVR as proportional to the Sharpe ratio of short-term holding returns of delta-neutral index straddles; second, we estimate the PVR in a Heston (1993) stochastic-volatility model. In both cases, the estimation is performed separately for different maturities. We find the PVR is negative and decreases in absolute value with maturity; it is more negative and its term structure is steeper when volatility is high. These findings are inconsistent with calibrations of established asset-pricing models that assume constant risk aversion across maturities.

Anxiety, overconfidence, and excessive risk-taking

We provide a model that can explain empirically relevant variations in confidence and risk taking by combining horizon-dependent risk aversion (“anxiety�?) and selective memory in a Bayesian intrapersonal game. In the time series, overconfidence is more prevalent when actual risk levels are high, while underconfidence occurs when risks are low. In the cross section, more anxious agents are more prone to biased confidence and their beliefs fluctuate more. This systematic variation in confidence levels can lead to objectively excessive risk taking by “insiders�? with the potential to amplify boom-bust cycles.

Rollover risk as market discipline: A two-sided inefficiency

Abstract Why does the market discipline that financial intermediaries face seem too weak during booms and too strong during crises? This paper shows in a general equilibrium setting that rollover risk as a disciplining device is effective only if all intermediaries face purely idiosyncratic risk. However, if assets are correlated, a two-sided inefficiency arises: Good aggregate states have intermediaries taking excessive risks, while bad aggregate states suffer from costly fire sales. The driving force behind this inefficiency is an amplifying feedback loop between asset values and market discipline. In equilibrium, financial intermediaries inefficiently amplify both positive and negative aggregate shocks.