Debt and Financial Crises

Ignorance, Debt and Financial Crises

In this paper we provide a theory of money markets and private money. We show that preserving symmetric ignorance in liquidity provision is welfare maximizing and strictly dominates symmetric or even perfect information. A key property for the functioning of money markets is when agents have no need to ask questions and no incentive to produce private information about the value of the security...

Governments Debt and Asset Management and Financial Crises : Sellers Beware

Financial Crises and the Optimality of Debt for Liquidity Provision

Systemic financial crises involve debt (leverage). We provide a theory of the optimality of debt, which nevertheless can lead to a crisis. Trade is best implemented by debt because it provides the smallest incentive for private information production, which creates trade-reducing adverse selection. Debt preserves symmetric ignorance between counterparties. Debt is least information-sensitive: t...

Financial Crises and Political Crises∗

The simultaneous determination of financial default and political crises is studied in an open economy model. Political crises accompany default in equilibrium because of an information transmission conflict between the government and the public. Multiple equilibria are possible: if foreign lenders are pessimistic about the country’s stability, they demand a high interest on the debt, exacerbat...

Endogenous debt crises ¬リニ

We distinguish two types of debt crises: those that are the outcome of exogenous shocks (to productivity growth for instance) and those that are endogenously created, either by self-fulfilling panic in financial markets or by the reckless behavior of “Panglossian” borrowers. After Krugman, we characterize as “Panglossian” those borrowers who only focus on their best growth prospects, anticipati...