IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/
MyIDEAS: Login to save this paper or follow this series

Liquidity Trap and Excessive Leverage

Author Info

  • Alp Simsek

    (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

  • Anton Korinek

    (Johns Hopkins University and IMF)

Abstract

We investigate the role of debt market policies in mitigating liquidity traps driven by household leverage. When borrowers engage in deleveraging, the interest rate needs to fall to induce lenders to pick up the decline in aggregate demand. However, if the fall in the interest rate is limited by the zero lower bound, aggregate demand is insufficient and the economy enters a liquidity trap. In such an environment, households' borrowing and saving decisions are associated with aggregate demand externalities. The competitive equilibrium allocation is constrained inefficient. Welfare can be improved by ex-ante restrictions on leverage to mitigate prospective deleveraging. Ex-post policies to write down debt also generate positive demand externalities.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.

File URL: https://www.economicdynamics.org/meetpapers/2013/paper_1369.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Paper provided by Society for Economic Dynamics in its series 2013 Meeting Papers with number 1369.

as
in new window

Length:
Date of creation: 2013
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:red:sed013:1369
Contact details of provider: Postal: Society for Economic Dynamics Christian Zimmermann Economic Research Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis PO Box 442 St. Louis MO 63166-0442 USA
Fax: 1-314-444-8731
Web page: http://www.EconomicDynamics.org/society.htmEmail:


More information through EDIRC

Keywords:

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:
  • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
  • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:

as in new window
  1. Bernanke, Ben S. & Gertler, Mark & Gilchrist, Simon, 1999. "The financial accelerator in a quantitative business cycle framework," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 21, pages 1341-1393 Elsevier.
  2. Emmanuel Farhi & Isabel Correia & Juan Pablo Nicolini & Pedro Teles, . "Unconventional Fiscal Policy at the Zero Bound," Working Paper 20945, Harvard University OpenScholar.
  3. Laurence Ball & Sandeep Mazumder, 2011. "Inflation Dynamics and the Great Recession," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 42(1 (Spring), pages 337-405.
  4. Joshua D. Rauh, 2006. "Investment and Financing Constraints: Evidence from the Funding of Corporate Pension Plans," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(1), pages 33-71, 02.
  5. Mankiw, N Gregory, 1985. "Small Menu Costs and Large Business Cycles: A Macroeconomic Model," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 100(2), pages 529-38, May.
  6. Matteo Iacoviello, 2005. "House Prices, Borrowing Constraints, and Monetary Policy in the Business Cycle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(3), pages 739-764, June.
  7. Schmitt-Grohé, Stephanie & Uribe, Martín, 2011. "Pegs and Pain," CEPR Discussion Papers 8275, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  8. Olivier Jeanne & Anton Korinek, 2010. "Excessive Volatility in Capital Flows: A Pigouvian Taxation Approach," NBER Working Papers 15927, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  9. Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko, 2013. "Is The Phillips Curve Alive and Well After All? Inflation Expectations and the Missing Disinflation," NBER Working Papers 19598, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  10. Atif Mian & Amir Sufi, 2010. "Household Leverage and the Recession of 2007–09," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 58(1), pages 74-117, August.
  11. Tullio Jappelli & Luigi Pistaferri, 2010. "The Consumption Response to Income Changes," NBER Working Papers 15739, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  12. Veronica Guerrieri & Guido Lorenzoni, 2011. "Credit Crises, Precautionary Savings, and the Liquidity Trap," NBER Working Papers 17583, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  13. Robert E. Hall, 2011. "The Long Slump," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(2), pages 431-69, April.
  14. Aiyagari, S Rao, 1994. "Uninsured Idiosyncratic Risk and Aggregate Saving," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 109(3), pages 659-84, August.
  15. Jonathan A. Parker & Nicholas S. Souleles & David S. Johnson & Robert McClelland, 2013. "Consumer Spending and the Economic Stimulus Payments of 2008," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(6), pages 2530-53, October.
  16. Carlstrom, Charles T & Fuerst, Timothy S, 1997. "Agency Costs, Net Worth, and Business Fluctuations: A Computable General Equilibrium Analysis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(5), pages 893-910, December.
  17. Emmanuel Farhi & Iván Werning, 2013. "A Theory of Macroprudential Policies in the Presence of Nominal Rigidities," NBER Working Papers 19313, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  18. Olivier Jeanne & Anton Korinek, 2010. "Managing Credit Booms and Busts: A Pigouvian Taxation Approach," NBER Working Papers 16377, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  19. Korinek, Anton, 2011. "Systemic risk-taking: amplification effects, externalities, and regulatory responses," Working Paper Series 1345, European Central Bank.
  20. Michael Woodford, 2012. "Inflation Targeting and Financial Stability," NBER Working Papers 17967, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  21. Jeremy C. Stein, 2012. "Monetary Policy as Financial Stability Regulation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 127(1), pages 57-95.
  22. Atif R. Mian & Amir Sufi, 2012. "What explains high unemployment? The aggregate demand channel," NBER Working Papers 17830, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  23. Emmanuel Farhi & Ivan Werning, 2012. "Dealing with the Trilemma: Optimal Capital Controls with Fixed Exchange Rates," NBER Working Papers 18199, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  24. Lawrence Christiano & Martin Eichenbaum & Sergio Rebelo, 2009. "When is the government spending multiplier large?," NBER Working Papers 15394, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  25. Gauti B. Eggertsson & Paul Krugman, 2012. "Debt, Deleveraging, and the Liquidity Trap: A Fisher-Minsky-Koo Approach," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 127(3), pages 1469-1513.
  26. Atif R. Mian & Amir Sufi, 2010. "Household Leverage and the Recession of 2007 to 2009," NBER Working Papers 15896, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  27. Paul R. Krugman, 1998. "It's Baaack: Japan's Slump and the Return of the Liquidity Trap," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 29(2), pages 137-206.
  28. Ricardo J. Caballero & Emmanuel Farhi, 2013. "A Model of the Safe Asset Mechanism (SAM): Safety Traps and Economic Policy," NBER Working Papers 18737, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

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

as in new window


Cited by:

  1. Matthew Rognlie & Andrei Shleifer & Alp Simsek, 2014. "Investment Hangover and the Great Recession," Working Paper 203866, Harvard University OpenScholar.
  2. Pontus Rendahl, 2014. "Fiscal Policy in an Unemployment Crisis," Discussion Papers 1405, Centre for Macroeconomics (CFM).
  3. Ricardo J. Caballero & Emmanuel Farhi, 2013. "A Model of the Safe Asset Mechanism (SAM): Safety Traps and Economic Policy," NBER Working Papers 18737, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Access and download statistics

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:red:sed013:1369. 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: (Christian Zimmermann)

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 references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link 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 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.

This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis using RePEc data.