IRVING FISHER, DEBT DEFLATION, AND CRISES

Debt Deflation and Bank Recapitalization

During some recent financial crises, the majority of domestic banks or indeed the entire banking sector became insolvent. We have analyzed the welfare effects of policy responses to bank insolvency by examining a modified version of the Diamond-Rajan model, introducing a fiat currency. The sources of inefficiency in our model are the ”moral hazard in banking” and the “premature liquidation of b...

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...

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...

Comment on Debt Deflation: Theory and Evidence

Fiscal Austerity during Debt Crises∗

This paper constructs a dynamic model of government borrowing and default. The government faces a fiscal constraint in that it cannot raise tax rates. By defaulting on the debt, the government can increase domestic consumption. Two types of default arise in this environment: fiscal defaults and aggregate defaults. Fiscal defaults occur because the government cannot service the debt due to its i...