A General Equilibrium Financial Asset Economy with Transaction Costs and Trading Constraints

This paper presents a unified framework for examining the general equilibrium effects of transactions costs and trading constraints on security market trades and prices. The model uses a discrete time/state framework and Kuhn-Tucker theory to characterize the optimal decisions of consumers and financial intermediaries. Transaction costs and constraints give rise to regions of no trade and to bid-ask spreads: their existence frustrate the derivation of standard results in arbitrage-based pricing. Nevertheless, we are able to obtain as dual characterizations of our primal problems, one-sided arbitrage pricing results and a personalized martingale representation of asset pricing. These pricing results are identical to those derived by Jouini and Kallal (1995) using arbitrage arguments. The paper's framework incorporates a number of specialized existing models and results, proves new results and discusses new directions for research. In particular, we include characterizations of intermediaries who hold optimal portfolios; brokers who do not hold portfolios, and consumer-specific transactions costs and trading constraints. Furthermore we show that in the special case of equiproportional transaction costs and a sufficient number of assets, there is an analogue of the arbitrage pricing result for European derivatives where prices are interpreted as mid-prices between the bid-ask spread. We discuss the effects of non-convex transaction technologies on prices and trades.Financial Markets, Transaction Costs, Trading Constraints, Asset Pricing, General Equilibrium, Incomplete Markets

Kinky perceived demand curves and Keynes-Negishi equilibria

The label “Keynes-Negishi equiibria” is attached here to equilibria in a monetary economy with imperfectly competitive product and labor markets where business firms and labor unions hold demand perceptions with kinks - as posited in Negishi’s 1979 book Microeconomic Foundations of Keynesian Macroeconomics. Such equilibria are defined in a general equilibrium model, and shown to exist. Methodological implications are briefly discussed in a concluding section.Equilibrium, imperfect competition, perceived demands, kinky demand, princing rules, union wage model, union objectives, cash-in-advance

Regulatory reform : integrating paradigms

The Subprime crisis largely resulted from failures to internalize systemic risk evenly across financial intermediaries and recognize the implications of Knightian uncertainty and mood swings. A successful reform of prudential regulation will need to integrate more harmoniously the three paradigms of moral hazard, externalities, and uncertainty. This is a tall order because each paradigm leads to different and often inconsistent regulatory implications. Moreover, efforts to address the central problem under one paradigm can make the problems under the others worse. To avoid regulatory arbitrage and ensure that externalities are uniformly internalized, all prudentially regulated intermediaries should be subjected to the same capital adequacy requirements, and unregulated intermediaries should be financed only by regulated intermediaries. Reflecting the importance of uncertainty, the new regulatory architecture will also need to rely less on markets and more on"holistic"supervision, and incorporate countercyclical norms that can be adjusted in light of changing circumstances.Debt Markets,Banks&Banking Reform,Emerging Markets,Labor Policies,Financial Intermediation

Regulating Ex Post: How Law Can Address the Inevitability of Financial Failure

Unlike many other areas of regulation, financial regulation operates in the context of a complex interdependent system. The interconnections among firms, markets, and legal rules have implications for financial regulatory policy, especially the choice between ex ante regulation aimed at preventing financial failure and ex post regulation aimed at responding to that failure. Regulatory theory has paid relatively little attention to this distinction. Were regulation to consist solely of duty-imposing norms, such neglect might be defensible. In the context of a system, however, regulation can also take the form of interventions aimed at mitigating the potentially systemic consequences of a financial failure. We show that this dual role of financial regulation implies that ex ante regulation and ex post regulation should be balanced in setting financial regulatory policy, and we offer guidelines for achieving that balance

FOREX Microstructure, Invisible Price Determinants,and the Central Bank's Understanding of Exchange Rate Formation

The paper investigates the transmission of macroeconomic factors into the price-setting behavior of a specific dealer in the FX market. This problem is viewed from the perspective of a central banker who observes the price evolution but does not make the market in the home currency. The central banker's task is to explain the forex behavior in terms of conventional economic logic. The analysis is based on a model of a multiple dealer market under two organizations - direct inter-dealer and brokered. The model is constructed in such a way as to reflect the most prominent features of the market for the Czech koruna and, accordingly, to address some issues of key relevance to the Czech National Bank's exchange rate policy. We show that the totality of the exchange rate-relevant fundamental factors influence the market maker's behavior through a single sufficient statistic, his 'marginal' valuation of foreign currency holdings. Under the two studied trading mechanisms, the marginal valuations across market participants determine the equilibrium exchange rate by means of different trade patterns. Specifically, the brokered market is inferior to the direct one in terms of welfare improvement through trade. It takes a higher inter-dealer trade volume in the brokered market to absorb a new price impulse. Therefore, the central banker would do best by monitoring the brokered segment (as the only partially transparent one available), but by conducting interventions in the direct segment, where the desired impact is easier to achieve.forex microstructure, multiple dealership, order flow, pricing schedule.

The liquidity dilemma and the repo market: a two-step policy option to address the regulatory void

A repurchase agreement (repo) is the sale of financial assets coupled with a promise to repurchase the same assets at a later date. With similar economic characteristics to secured loans and bank deposits, the repo market is one of the main sources of liquidity for financial markets and a vital segment of the US financial system. During the financial crisis of 2007-2009, when the markets crashed and the value of many assets dropped, repo lenders lost confidence in the repo market and massively withdrew their financing. Panic then ensued, drying up the liquidity in the markets. The over-reliance on short-term repo financing magnified the liquidity crunch, and financial institutions such as Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns were brought to the brink of ruin. The crisis unveiled the deep opacity of the repo market, its proneness to runs, its structural weaknesses, the interconnectedness of its participants, the absence of stability buffers, and the lack of any comprehensive regulatory or supervisory framework. Astonishingly, however, the post-crisis regulatory agenda almost completely ignored the repo market. Though depicted as a reform intended to create a safer financial system, the Dodd-Frank Act essentially left untouched this important source of systemic risk. After outlining the repo market and shedding new light on its structural instability, this paper presents an alternative narrative of the crisis by arguing that the structurally weak repo market triggered a liquidity crunch that halted the engine of the financial system. In doing so, the paper challenges the assumption that the crisis was caused merely by over-the-counter derivatives, securitization, and too-big-to-fail institutions. This paper shows how the repo market has developed within the financial markets – free from the watchful eyes of regulators and capitalizing on regulatory arbitrage – and challenges the regulatory void of the Dodd-Frank Act vis-à-vis the repo market. Specifically, this paper presents an original two-step policy option for assessing the repo market, based on the lesson of the post-crisis reforms of over-the-counter derivatives market as well as the incremental role envisioned by lawmakers for “financial market infrastructure” and central clearing counterparties as stability mechanisms. This paper calls for the assessment of the necessity of a structural intervention in the repo market to fix the failures that currently characterize it, and suggests that more transparency, coupled with a strong financial market infrastructure, would make the repo market more transparent, stable, and resilient

Cost Economies and Market Power in U.S. Beef Packing

Industrial Organization, Livestock Production/Industries,