A new model for market-based regulation of subnational borrowing - the Mexican approach

Faced with weak sub-national finances that pose a risk to macroeconomic stability, Mexico's federal government in April 2000 established an innovative incentive framework to bring fiscal discipline to state and municipal governments. That framework is based on two pillars: an explicit renunciation of federal bail-outs, and a Basel-consistent link between the capital-risk weighting of bank loans to sub-national governments, and the borrower's credit rating. In theory, this new regulatory arrangement should reduce moral hazard among banks and their state, and municipal clients; differentiate interest rates on the basis of the borrower's creditworthiness; and, elicit a strong demand for institutional development at the sub-national level. But its access will depend on three factors critical to implementation: 1) Whether markets find thefederal commitment not to bail out defaulting sub-national governments credible. 2) Whether sub-national governments have access to financing other than bank loans. 3) How well bank capital rules are enforced.Environmental Economics&Policies,Banks&Banking Reform,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Economic Theory&Research,Financial Intermediation,Banks&Banking Reform,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Financial Intermediation,Insurance&Risk Mitigation

Sequential Sharing Rules for River Sharing Problems

We analyse the redistribution of a resource among agents who have claims to the resource and who are ordered linearly. A well known example of this particular situation is the river sharing problem. We exploit the linear order of agents to transform the river sharing problem to a sequence of two-agent river sharing problems. These reduced problems are mathematically equivalent to bankruptcy problems and can therefore be solved using any bankruptcy rule. Our proposed class of solutions, that we call sequential sharing rules, solves the river sharing problem. Our approach extends the bankruptcy literature to settings with a sequential structure of both the agents and the resource to be shared. In the paper, we first characterise a class of sequential sharing rules. Subsequently, we apply sequential sharing rules based on four classical bankruptcy rules, assess their properties, and compare them to four alternative solutions to the river sharing problem.River Sharing Problem, Sequential Sharing Rule, Bankruptcy Problem, Water Allocation

Reallocating Water: An Application of Sequent

We present an axiomatic approach to the reallocation of water rights among economic sectors. Reallocation may be appropriate when the current schedule of water allocation is considered unfair. Our proposed approach is based on the combination of initial water rights, sectors' claims to water, and an exogenous ordering of these sectors. We apply sharing rules, based on bankruptcy rules, to reallocate water, which complements other approaches to the reallocation of water rights, including those based on water markets. Our approach is illustrated using an application to water reallocation in Cyprus, where reallocation of water rights has been recognised as an essential step towards good water governance and one of the main challenges for current water policies.Water Reallocation, Sequential Sharing Rule, Water Scarcity, Axiomatic Approach, Cyprus

A New Capital Regulation For Large Financial Institutions

We design a new, implementable capital requirement for large financial institutions (LFIs) that are too big to fail. Our mechanism mimics the operation of margin accounts. To ensure that LFIs do not default on either their deposits or their derivative contracts, we require that they maintain an equity cushion sufficiently great that their own credit default swap price stays below a threshold level, and a cushion of long term bonds sufficiently large that, even if the equity is wiped out, the systemically relevant obligations are safe. If the CDS price goes above the threshold, the LFI regulator forces the LFI to issue equity until the CDS price moves back down. If this does not happen within a predetermined period of time, the regulator intervenes. We show that this mechanism ensures that LFIs are always solvent, while preserving some of the disciplinary effects of debt.Banks, Capital Requirement, Too Big to Fail

Effectiveness of CDS regulation : an insight Into the Cyprus and Greek crisis

Esta dissertação realiza-se no âmbito de tentar averiguar se as mais recents regulamentações relativas ao mercado de CDS surtiram algum efeito na regularização deste. Mais especificamente, são estudadas as medidas da inclusão do bail-in como medida de qualidade de crédito na ISDA 2014 e a proibição de transações de CDS sem qualquer cobertura ao risco. Devido ao elevado crescimento do mercado CDS, torna-se imperativo que as autoridades competentes tomem medidas de forma a controlar um mercado em ascensão e com um impacto cada vez maior. No entanto não existe ainda quaisquer provas conclusivas que nos levem a crer que as medidas recentmente tomadas tenham sido a melhor solução para o problema, existindo inclusive indícios que tais medidas poderão exercer precisamente o efeito contrário ao pretendido. Os resultados aqui analisados mostram precisamente que tais medidas não conseguiram controlar o comportamento explosivo dos spreads dos CDS, sendo assim necessário rever as medidas usadas e planear novas medidas, para que exista um controlo de mercado de maneira mais eficaz.This dissertation is realized in the context of understanding if recent measures taken by European authorities relative to the CDS market were effective. More specifically this paper study the bail-in inclusion on ISDA 2014 as a credit quality event and the ban of uncovered CDS. Due to CDS market rapidly growth, it becomes imperative that competent authorities take actions with the view to control this ascending market. Nevertheless there are no conclusive evidences that support the idea that the recent measures were the best solution to the problem, having in counterpart suspicious that such measures could exert the contrary effect. The analysed results precisely suggest that those measures ere not able to control the CDS spreads explosive behavior, showing that it requires new measure planning in order to obtain a more efficiente market control to stabilize the market

Epidemics of Liquidity Shortages in Interbank Markets

Financial contagion from liquidity shocks has being recently ascribed as a prominent driver of systemic risk in interbank lending markets. Building on standard compartment models used in epidemics, in this work we develop an EDB (Exposed-Distressed-Bankrupted) model for the dynamics of liquidity shocks reverberation between banks, and validate it on electronic market for interbank deposits data. We show that the interbank network was highly susceptible to liquidity contagion at the beginning of the 2007/2008 global financial crisis, and that the subsequent micro-prudential and liquidity hoarding policies adopted by banks increased the network resilience to systemic risk---yet with the undesired side effect of drying out liquidity from the market. We finally show that the individual riskiness of a bank is better captured by its network centrality than by its participation to the market, along with the currently debated concept of "too interconnected to fail"

Prudential Policy with Distorted Beliefs

This paper studies leverage regulation when equity investors and/or creditors have distorted beliefs relative to a planner. We characterize how the optimal regulation responds to arbitrary changes in investors’/creditors’ beliefs, relating our results to practical scenarios. We show that the optimal regulation depends on the type and magnitude of such changes. Optimism by investors calls for looser leverage regulation, while optimism by creditors, or jointly by both investors/creditors, calls for tighter leverage regulation. Our results apply to environments with i) planners with imperfect knowledge of investors’/creditors’ beliefs, ii) monetary policy, iii) bailouts and pecuniary externalities, and iv) endogenous beliefs

Bank risk, bailouts and ambiguity

The theoretical analysis in the second part investigates the effect of liquidity assistance and bailouts on bank risk taking and liquidity choice. Furthermore, it explores the possibilities for central banks to create ambiguity about liquidity assistance, thereby influencing bank choices. The results in this thesis have implications for the reform of financial regulation and the safety net. Banks have become more systemically relevant; new regulation has to take this into account. Moreover, a new financial safety net should involve suitable bailout penalties and central banks that can resort to constructive ambiguity to give banks proper incentives.