POLICY PROPOSAL ON THE FINANCE AND GROWTH RELATIONSHIP: UNDERSTANDING THE SWITCH FROM "VIRTUOUS" TO "BAD" CYCLES

Studi condotti sulla crisi finanziaria del 2007-09 e la recessione economica hanno evidenziato l’inadeguatezza delle teorie predominanti e la loro inefficacia nel proporre adeguate soluzioni di policy. La presenza di moneta bancaria nell’economia e di un sistema finanziario caratterizzato da innovazione finanziaria e speculazione modificano profondamente la natura stessa del processo di credit creation. Una nuova prospettiva sulla relazione tra finanza e crescita economica necessita essere sviluppata cercando di colmare le lacune esistenti tra New Growth Theory e Evolutionary Theory, come J.A. Schumpeter (1934) e altri studiosi hanno evidenziato. I fattori strutturali sono alla base della persistente instabilita` finanziaria nell’economia. Questo studio tenta di spiegare l’ipotesi che sta alla base dell’intera analisi circa il passaggio avutosi nell'impianto strutturale dell'economia da un virtuous cycle ad un bad cycle, e dimostrare l’esistenza di cio` che definiamo wealth trap, la quale e` ipotizzata essere conseguenza di un sistema finanziario tecnologicamente avanzato, ma non socialmente avanzato. Un modello non lineare ad Agenti (AMB) chiamato BFSE (Based-line Financial System Economy) mostra , tramite la sperimentazione sul modello ICEACE(Erlingsson et al., 2011), evidenze sulla centralita` del sistema finanziario e dell’esistenza del bad cycle. Una discussione sulle macroprudential policies e le politiche strutturali e` introdotta.Studies of the 2007-09 credit crisis and the resulting recession have revealed the inadequacy of the predominant theoretical frameworks and their failure to propose adequate policy solutions. The presence in the economy of bank money and a financial system characterized by financial innovation and speculation changes the nature of credit creation. As J.A. Schumpeter (1934) and others scholars have recognized, a new perspective on the financial-growth relationship needs to be developed by filling the gaps in New Growth Theory and Evolutionary Theory - two Sons of Schumpeter - and in some way combining them. Structural factors are at the bottom of the persistence of the financial instability in the economy. The goal of this research is to explain the main hypothesis of the historical passage of the economy from a virtuous to a bad cycle and to show the existence of the wealth trap, which is a consequence of a high-technologically advanced financial system within the economic system. A non-linear ABM (Agent Based Model) called BFSE provides, through experimentation using ICEACE model (Erlingsson et al., 2011), interesting evidences of the centrality of the financial system and the bad cycle. Macroprudential and structural policies are introduced

Theory and Evidence on the Finance-Growth Relationship: The Virtuous and Unvirtuous Cycles

Since the 1980s, financial crises have tended to reoccur with increasing frequency and growing intensity. They are endogenously generated by the established OTD (Originate-To-Distribute) model within the new finance-growth paradigm. Good finance fosters the correct allocation of financial resources, the fair redistribution of wealth and positive economic growth (the virtuous cycle), whereas bad finance captures part of the created wealth and, thanks to a highly technologically advanced financial system with the ability to create money ex nihilo, over time it drags the economy down to recession or negative growth, destroying wealth and consequentially social welfare (the unvirtuous cycle). Therefore, structural factors are at the foundation of the persistence of instability and thus of what we define as the unvirtuous cycle, which can generate what we label the wealth trap. A VUC index has been developed by us to capture the status quo of the finance-growth relationship. A cross country analysis for the US, UK and Euro area economies has been made in order to verify the validity of the index. A core variable is identified: the degree of financial innovation. This is an endogenous variable within the endogenous money/credit creation process; its identification is of crucial importance, as it is the key to full understanding of the finance-growth relationship and is the element of originality in this field of studies. The VUC index for all countries shows clearly the exponential effect of the degree of financial innovation over time. It is important for scholars and policymakers to understand the mechanism underpinning the finance-growth relationship and that it is their responsibility to return the economic system to what we will call the virtuous cycle

Systemic financial risk indicators and securitised assets: an agent-based framework

The paper presents an agent-based model of a credit economy which includes a securitisation process and a bailout mechanism for bank bankruptcies. Within this framework, banks are able to sell mortgages to a financial vehicle corporation, which finances its activity by creating mortgage-backed securities and selling them to a mutual fund. In turn, the mutual fund collects liquidity by selling shares to households and remunerates them with a monthly interest. The impact of this mechanism is analysed by means of computational experiments for different levels of banks’ securitisation propensity. Furthermore, we study a set of systemic risk indicators which have the aim of assessing the imbalances in the financial system. Two of them are the mortgage-to-GDP ratio and the capital adequacy ratio, which are constructed to detect only the on-balance sheet changes in banks’ credit exposure. We consider two additional indicators, similar to the previous ones with the only difference that they are also able to account for the off-balance sheet items. Moreover, we adopt an indicator, the so-called “virtuous–unvirtuous cycle” indicator, which, besides off-balance assets, targets also the GDP. The results show that higher securitisation propensity weakens the financial stability of banks with relevant effects on different sectors of the economy. Most importantly, the analysis of systemic risk reveals the important issue of designing suitable systemic risk indicators for predicting incoming financial crises, finding that an essential feature of these indicators should be to integrate banks’ off-balance sheet assets

Theory and Evidence on the Finance-Growth Relationship: The Virtuous and Unvirtuous Cycles

Since the 1980s, financial crises have tended to reoccur with increasing frequency and growing intensity. They are endogenously generated by the established OTD (Originate-To-Distribute) model within the new finance-growth paradigm. Good finance fosters the correct allocation of financial resources, the fair redistribution of wealth and positive economic growth (the virtuous cycle), whereas bad finance captures part of the created wealth and, thanks to a highly technologically advanced financial system with the ability to create money ex nihilo, over time it drags the economy down to recession or negative growth, destroying wealth and consequentially social welfare (the unvirtuous cycle). Therefore, structural factors are at the foundation of the persistence of instability and thus of what we define as the unvirtuous cycle, which can generate what we label the wealth trap. A VUC index has been developed by us to capture the status quo of the finance-growth relationship. A cross country analysis for the US, UK and Euro area economies has been made in order to verify the validity of the index. A core variable is identified: the degree of financial innovation. This is an endogenous variable within the endogenous money/credit creation process; its identification is of crucial importance, as it is the key to full understanding of the finance-growth relationship and is the element of originality in this field of studies. The VUC index for all countries shows clearly the exponential effect of the degree of financial innovation over time. It is important for scholars and policymakers to understand the mechanism underpinning the finance-growth relationship and that it is their responsibility to return the economic system to what we will call the virtuous cycle

Systemic Financial Risk Indicators and Securitised Assets: an Agent-Based Framework

The paper presents an agent-based model of a credit economy which includes a securitisation process and a bailout mechanism for banks' bankruptcies. Within this model's framework banks are able to sell mortgages to a Financial Vehicle Corporation, which finances its activity by creating Mortgage-Backed Securities and selling them to a mutual fund. In turn, the mutual fund collects liquidity by selling shares to households and remunerating them with a monthly interest rate. The impact of this mechanism is analysed by means of computational experiments for different levels of securitisation propensities of banks. Furthermore, we study a set of systemic risk indicators which have the aim to assess financial imbalances within the financial system. Two of them are the mortgage-to-GDP ratio and the Capital Adequacy Ratio which are constructed to detect only the in-balance sheet changes in banks' credit exposure. We consider two additional indicators, similar to the previous ones with the only difference that they are able to account also for the off-balance sheet items. Moreover, we introduce a novel indicator, the so-called VUC indicator, which also targets the off-balance assets. Results confirm that higher securitisation propensities weaken the financial stability of banks with relevant effects on different sectors of the economy. Most important, the analysis of systemic risk reveals the important issue of designing suitable systemic risk indicators for predicting incoming financial crises, finding that an essential feature of these indicators should be to integrate banks' off-balance sheet assets