IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/moneco/v81y2016icp111-132.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Phasing out the GSEs

Author

Listed:
  • Elenev, Vadim
  • Landvoigt, Tim
  • Van Nieuwerburgh, Stijn

Abstract

We develop a new model of the mortgage market that emphasizes the role of the financial sector and the government. Risk tolerant savers act as intermediaries between risk averse depositors and impatient borrowers. Both borrowers and intermediaries can default. The government provides both mortgage guarantees and deposit insurance. Underpriced government mortgage guarantees lead to more and riskier mortgage originations and higher financial sector leverage. Mortgage crises occasionally turn into financial crises and government bailouts due to the fragility of the intermediaries’ balance sheets. Foreclosure crises beget fiscal uncertainty, further disrupting the optimal allocation of risk in the economy. Increasing the price of the mortgage guarantee “crowds in” the private sector, reduces financial fragility, leads to fewer but safer mortgages, lowers house prices, and raises mortgage and risk-free interest rates. Due to a more robust financial sector and less fiscal uncertainty, consumption smoothing improves and foreclosure rates fall. While borrowers are nearly indifferent to a world with or without mortgage guarantees, savers are substantially better off. While aggregate welfare increases, so does wealth inequality.

Suggested Citation

  • Elenev, Vadim & Landvoigt, Tim & Van Nieuwerburgh, Stijn, 2016. "Phasing out the GSEs," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 111-132.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:moneco:v:81:y:2016:i:c:p:111-132
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jmoneco.2016.06.003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304393216300332
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Adrian, Tobias & Boyarchenko, Nina, 2012. "Intermediary leverage cycles and financial stability," Staff Reports 567, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, revised 01 Feb 2015.
    2. Carmen M. Reinhart & Kenneth S. Rogoff, 2009. "Varieties of Crises and Their Dates," Introductory Chapters,in: This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly Princeton University Press.
    3. Yavuz Arslan & Bulent Guler & Temel Taskin, 2015. "Joint Dynamics of House Prices and Foreclosures," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 47(S1), pages 133-169, March.
    4. Markus K. Brunnermeier & Yuliy Sannikov, 2014. "A Macroeconomic Model with a Financial Sector," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(2), pages 379-421, February.
    5. Angela Maddaloni & Jose-Luis Peydro, 2011. "Bank Risk-taking, Securitization, Supervision, and Low Interest Rates: Evidence from the Euro-area and the U.S. Lending Standards," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(6), pages 2121-2165.
    6. Itamar Drechsler & Alexi Savov & Philipp Schnabl, 2014. "A Model of Monetary Policy and Risk Premia," NBER Working Papers 20141, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Hansen, Gary D., 1985. "Indivisible labor and the business cycle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 309-327, November.
    8. Zhiguo He & Arvind Krishnamurthy, 2013. "Intermediary Asset Pricing," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(2), pages 732-770, April.
    9. Gervais, Martin, 2002. "Housing taxation and capital accumulation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(7), pages 1461-1489, October.
    10. Krishnamurthy, Arvind & Vissing-Jorgensen, Annette, 2015. "The Impact of Treasury Supply on Financial Sector Lending and Stability," Research Papers 3276, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    11. Kenneth L. Judd, 1998. "Numerical Methods in Economics," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262100711.
    12. Anat Admati & Martin Hellwig, 2013. "The Bankers' New Clothes: What's Wrong with Banking and What to Do about It," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 9929.
    13. Krishnamurthy, Arvind & Vissing-Jorgensen, Annette, 2015. "The impact of Treasury supply on financial sector lending and stability," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(3), pages 571-600.
    14. Tim Landvoigt & Monika Piazzesi & Martin Schneider, 2015. "The Housing Market(s) of San Diego," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(4), pages 1371-1407, April.
    15. Nobuhiro Kiyotaki & Alexander Michaelides & Kalin Nikolov, 2011. "Winners and Losers in Housing Markets," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43, pages 255-296, March.
    16. Yongqiang Chu, 2014. "Credit constraints, inelastic supply, and the housing boom," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 17(1), pages 52-69, January.
    17. Gete, Pedro & Zecchetto, Franco, 2017. "Distributional Implications of Government Guarantees in Mortgage Markets," MPRA Paper 80643, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. John Y. Campbell & Stefano Giglio & Parag Pathak, 2011. "Forced Sales and House Prices," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(5), pages 2108-2131, August.
    19. Aaron Hedlund, 2014. "The Cyclical Dynamics of Illiquid Housing, Debt, and Foreclosures," Working Papers 1416, Department of Economics, University of Missouri.
    20. Oliver Hart & Luigi Zingales, 2011. "A New Capital Regulation for Large Financial Institutions," American Law and Economics Review, Oxford University Press, vol. 13(2), pages 453-490.
    21. Chambers, Matthew & Garriga, Carlos & Schlagenhauf, Don E., 2009. "Housing policy and the progressivity of income taxation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(8), pages 1116-1134, November.
    22. Floetotto, Max & Kirker, Michael & Stroebel, Johannes, 2016. "Government intervention in the housing market: Who wins, who loses?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 106-123.
    23. Viral V. Acharya & Matthew Richardson & Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh & Lawrence J. White, 2011. "Guaranteed to Fail: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Debacle of Mortgage Finance," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 9400.
    24. Krishnamurthy, Arvind & Vissing-Jorgensen, Annette, 2015. "The Impact of Treasury Supply on Financial Sector Lending and Stability," CEPR Discussion Papers 10717, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    25. Chatterjee, Satyajit & Eyigungor, Burcu, 2009. "Foreclosures and house price dynamics: a quantitative analysis of the mortgage crisis and the foreclosure prevention policy," Working Papers 09-22, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    26. Dean Corbae & Erwan Quintin, 2015. "Leverage and the Foreclosure Crisis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 123(1), pages 1-65.
    27. Hart, Oliver D., 1975. "On the optimality of equilibrium when the market structure is incomplete," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 418-443, December.
    28. Jeske, Karsten & Krueger, Dirk & Mitman, Kurt, 2013. "Housing, mortgage bailout guarantees and the macro economy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(8), pages 917-935.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. repec:eee:dyncon:v:87:y:2018:i:c:p:124-151 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Gete, Pedro & Zecchetto, Franco, 2017. "Distributional Implications of Government Guarantees in Mortgage Markets," MPRA Paper 80643, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Brzoza-Brzezina, Michał & Kolasa, Marcin & Makarski, Krzysztof, 2017. "Monetary and macroprudential policy with foreign currency loans," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 54(PB), pages 352-372.
    4. Paolo Sodini & Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh & Roine Vestman & Ulf von Lilienfeld-Toal, 2016. "Identifying the Benefits from Home Ownership: A Swedish Experiment," NBER Working Papers 22882, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Erik Hurst & Benjamin J. Keys & Amit Seru & Joseph Vavra, 2016. "Regional Redistribution through the US Mortgage Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(10), pages 2982-3028, October.
    6. Tim Landvoigt & Juliane Begenau, 2016. "Financial Regulation in a Quantitative Model of the Modern Banking System," 2016 Meeting Papers 1462, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    7. Zhao, Yunhui, 2016. "Got Hurt for What You Paid? Revisiting Government Subsidy in the U.S. Mortgage Market," MPRA Paper 81083, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 01 Aug 2017.
    8. Marcin Kolasa, 2016. "Equilibrium foreign currency mortgages," Working Papers 2016-021, Warsaw School of Economics, Collegium of Economic Analysis.
    9. Yoo, Jinhyuk, 2017. "Capital injection to banks versus debt relief to households," IMFS Working Paper Series 111, Goethe University Frankfurt, Institute for Monetary and Financial Stability (IMFS).
    10. Silvo, Aino, 2017. "House prices, lending standards, and the macroeconomy," Research Discussion Papers 4/2017, Bank of Finland.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Financial intermediation; Housing policy; Government bailouts;

    JEL classification:

    • E0 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy
    • G00 - Financial Economics - - General - - - General
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G18 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages
    • G28 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Government Policy and Regulation

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:moneco:v:81:y:2016:i:c:p:111-132. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Dana Niculescu). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505566 .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.