Adverse Selection and the Accelerator

This paper reexamines the relationship between financial market imperfections and economic instability. I present a model in which financial accelerator effects come from adverse selection in credit markets. Unlike other models of the financial accelerator, the model I present has the potential to stabilize the economy rather than destabilize it. The stabilizing forces in the dynamic model are closely related to forces that cause overinvestment in static models. Consequently, the stabilizing properties of the model are not specific to adverse selection but rather are present in any environment in which credit market distortions cause overinvestment. When investment projects are equity financed, or when contracts are written optimally, the only equilibria that emerge are stabilizer equilibria. Thus, stabilizing outcomes are more robust in this model. Finally, the empirical distinction between accelerator equilibria and stabilizer equilibria is subtle. Many statistics used to test for financial accelerators are observationally equivalent in stabilizer equilibria.subliminal extant Smith economagic gmm

Managing Markets for Toxic Assets

We present a model in which banks trade toxic assets to fund investments. Adverse selection in toxic assets reduces liquidity and investment. Investment is inefficiently low because banks must sell high-quality assets below their "fair" value. We consider whether equity injections and asset purchases improve market outcomes. By allowing banks to fund investments without selling high-quality assets, equity injections reduce the number of high-quality assets traded and further contaminate the interbank market. If equity is directed to firms with the greatest liquidity needs, the contamination effect causes investment to fall. Asset purchase programs often improve liquidity, investment and welfare.Adverse selection; investment; TARP; financial crisis

Durable Goods and Conformity

Is the variety of products supplied in markets a reflection of the diversity of consumers' preferences? In this paper, we argue that the distribution of durable goods offered in markets tends to be compressed relative to the distribution of consumers' underlying preferences. In particular, there are strong incentives for conformity in markets for durable goods. The reason for conformity is natural: durables (for example houses) are traded and as a result, demand for these goods is influenced by their resale value. Agents may like one product, but purchase another because of resale concerns. We show that (1) there is a tendency to conform to the average preference; (2) conformity depends primarily on the number of people with extreme preferences; (3) conformity increases with increases in durability, patience, and the likelihood of trade; and (4) equilibrium conformity is not necessarily optimal. Surprisingly, there tends to be too little conformity in equilibrium. Conformity also creates a demand for rental markets. Renting does not necessarily decrease conformity however. Instead, renting tends to exaggerate conformity in the owner-occupied market.

Temporary Investment Tax Incentives: Theory with Evidence from Bonus Depreciation

Investment decisions are inherently forward-looking. The payoff of acquiring capital goods, particularly long-lived capital goods, is governed almost exclusively by events in the far future. Because the timing of the investment itself does not affect future payoffs, there are strong incentives to delay or accelerate investment to take advantage of predictable intertemporal variations in cost. For sufficiently long-lived capital goods, these incentives are so strong that the intertemporal elasticity of investment demand is nearly infinite. As a consequence, for a temporary tax change, the shadow price of long-lived capital goods must reflect the full tax subsidy regardless of the elasticity of investment supply. While price data provide no information on the elasticity of supply, they can reveal the extent to which adjustment costs are internal or external to the firm. In contrast, the elasticity of investment supply can be inferred from quantity data alone. The bonus depreciation allowance passed in 2002 and increased in 2003 presents an opportunity to test the sharp predictions of neoclassical investment theory. In the law, certain types of long-lived capital goods qualify for substantial tax subsides while others do not. The data show that investment in qualified properties was substantially higher than for unqualified property. The estimated elasticity of investment supply is high--between 10 and 20. Market prices do not react to the subsidy as the theory dictates. This suggests either that internal (unmeasured) adjustment costs play a significant role or that measurement problems in the price data effectively conceal the price changes. While the policy noticeably increased investment in types of capital that benefited substantially from bonus depreciation, the aggregate effects of the policy were modest. The analysis suggests that the policy may have increased output by roughly 0.1 percent to 0.2 percent and increased employment by roughly 100,000 to 200,000 jobs.

Home Production by Dual Earner Couples and Consumption During Retirement

To study the role of home production in life-cycle behavior, this paper creates a theoretical model in which both spouses in a couple allocate their time between market and home work. It then derives a pair of regression equations for estimating the parameters of the model, and it carries out the estimation using panel data on household net worth and lifetime earnings from the Health and Retirement Study and pseudo-panel data on household consumption expenditures from the Consumer Expenditure Survey. We estimate that the value of forgone home production is roughly 10-15 cents for every dollar that a married man earns, but 30-35 cents per dollar of married women’s market earnings. Our findings imply male labor supply elasticities that are very near zero and female elasticities in the range of 0.50. Our model predicts a substantial decline in measured consumption expenditure at a household’s retirement, and it shows that Euler-equation models of consumption behavior should include terms reflecting home production.

An sS Model with Adverse Selection

We present a model of the market for used cars in which agents face a fixed cost of adjustment, the magnitude of which depend on the degree of adverse selection in the secondary market. We find that, unlike typical models, the sS bands in our model contract as the variance of the shock process increases. We also analyze a dynamic version of the model in which agents are allowed to make decisions that are conditional of the age of a used car. We find that, as a car ages, the lemons problem tends to decline in importance, and the sS bands contract.

Do Flexible Durable Goods Prices Undermine Sticky Price Models?

The “neoclassical synthesis” sticky price model exhibits strange behavior when augmented with markets for durable goods with flexible prices. While in the data the output of durable goods responds strongly and positively to a loosening of monetary policy, in dynamic general equilibrium models a monetary expansion causes the output of flexibly priced durables to contract. In an instructive special case in which the only sticky prices are those of nondurables, the negative co-movement of durable and nondurable output exactly offsets and the behavior of aggregate output in the model is very similar to that of a model with fully flexible prices. This neutrality result is special, but the perverse response of durables to monetary policy is highly robust. The reason for the co-movement problem is the combination of a naturally high intertemporal elasticity of substitution for the purchases of durables and temporarily high factor prices associated with an economic expansion.sticky-prices durables comovement neutrality

Phased-In Tax Cuts and Economic Activity

Phased-in tax reductions are a common feature of tax legislation. This paper uses a dynamic general equilibrium model to quantify the effects of delaying tax cuts. According to the analysis of the model, the phased-in tax cuts of the 2001 tax law substantially reduced employment, output, and investment during the phase-in period. In contrast, the immediate tax cuts of the 2003 tax law provided significant incentives for immediate production and investment. The paper argues that the rules and accounting procedures used by Congress for formulating tax policy have a significant impact in shaping the details of tax policy and led to the phase-ins, sunsets, and temporary tax changes in both the 2001 and 2003 tax laws.Fiscal Policy, Tax Policy

Sticky Price Models and Durable Goods

This paper shows that there are striking implications that stem from including durable goods in otherwise conventional sticky price models. The behavior of these models depends heavily on whether durable goods are present and whether these goods have sticky prices. If long-lived durables have sticky prices, then even small durables sectors can cause the model to behave as though most prices were sticky. Conversely, if durable goods prices are flexible then the model exhibits unwelcome behavior. Flexibly priced durables contract during periods of economic expansion. The tendency towards negative comovement is very robust and can be so strong as to dominate the aggregate behavior of the model. In an instructive limiting case, money has no effects on aggregate output even though most prices in the model are sticky.Sticky prices, Durables, Comovement, Neutrality