The literature on costs of financial instability tends to focus on fiscal costs and the impact on GDP of banking crises. In this paper we analyse the effect of a banking or currency crisis on consumption. We show that consumption plays an important role in the macroeconomic adjustment following a financial crisis. Furthermore, the effect of a crisis is aggravated by high leverage, notably as shown by the effect of a high debt-income ratio, despite the benefits of financial liberalisation in easing liquidity constraints. It is also greater in a small open economy than in the G-7. Meanwhile, falling house prices are shown to be part of the transmission process of financial instability, and high nominal interest rates are an indicator of sharp declines in consumption. A simulation for a banking crisis underlines the important role of monetary and fiscal policy in easing the impact of a financial crisis on consumption and other expenditure components. Viewed in the light of growing gearing, or leverage, in recent years, the results imply that a banking crisis taking place now could have a greater incidence than in the past, especially if macroeconomic policy is unable to respond, as for a small country in EMU.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
file. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by National Institute of Economic and Social Research in its series NIESR Discussion Papers with number
243.