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Call for Papers:
June 17-18, 2019: Workshop on
A Dynamic Economic and Monetary Union
at the Barcelona GSE Summer Forum
Keynotes: Mark Aguiar (Princeton) and Timothy J. Kehoe (Minnesota)
(please submit before February 28, 2019)
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Working Papers
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Slow Debt, Deep Recessions
(with Immo Schott)
(March 2019, submitted)
Business credit lags GDP growth by about one year. This contributes to high
leverage during recessions and slow deleveraging. We show that a model in which
firms use risky long-term debt replicates the slow adjustment of firm debt. In the
model, slow-moving debt has important effects for real activity. High levels of firm
debt issued during expansions are only gradually reduced during recessions. This
generates an adverse feedback loop between high credit spreads and low investment
and thereby amplifies the downturn. Sluggish deleveraging slows down the recovery.
The equilibrium is constrained inefficient because firms exert an externality on the
holders of previously issued debt. The constrained efficient allocation substantially
reduces macroeconomic volatility.
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Debt Dilution and Debt Overhang
(with Immo Schott)
(August 2018, Revise & Resubmit: Review of Economic Dynamics)
Barcelona GSE Working Paper 997
We introduce long-term debt (and a maturity choice) into a dynamic model of
firm financing and production. This allows us to study two distortions which are
absent from standard models of short-term debt: (1.) Debt dilution distorts firms’
choice of debt; (2.) Debt overhang distorts investment. In a dynamic model of
production, leverage, and debt maturity, we show that the two distortions interact
to reduce investment, increase leverage, and increase the default rate. We find that
the macroeconomic effects of debt dilution and debt overhang can be important:
A financial reform which increases investment, output, and welfare in a standard
model of short-term debt can have the opposite effect in a model with short-term
debt and long-term debt.
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A Blessing in Disguise? Market Power and Growth with Financial Frictions
(with David Strauss)
(August 2017)
Barcelona GSE Working Paper 998
Firm market power raises growth in the presence of financial frictions. The
reason is that self financing becomes more effective if firm earnings are higher.
We test this mechanism using Korean manufacturing data 1963-2003. We find
that more concentrated sectors grow faster. This positive empirical relationship
between concentration and growth gets weaker as credit becomes more abundant.
Using a simple growth model, we study counterfactuals. The observed rise of
concentration in Korea until the mid-1970s has increased manufacturing value
added 1963-2003 on average by at least 0.6% per year. The effect of firm market
power on worker welfare is ambiguous.
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Publications
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Bank Opacity and Financial Crises
Journal of Banking & Finance, Vol. 97, December 2018, pp. 157-176
Working Paper;
Barcelona GSE Focus
This paper studies a model of endogenous bank opacity. Why do banks choose to hide their risk
exposure from the public? And should policy makers force banks to be more transparent? In the model,
bank opacity is costly because it encourages banks to take on too much risk. But opacity also reduces
the incidence of bank runs (for a given level of risk taking). Banks choose to be inefficiently opaque
if the composition of their asset holdings is proprietary information. In this case, policy makers can
improve upon the market outcome by imposing public disclosure requirements (such as Pillar Three of
Basel II). However, full transparency maximizes neither efficiency nor stability. The model can explain
why empirically a higher degree of bank competition leads to increased transparency.
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Teaching
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During the 2019 summer term, I am teaching the Macro sequence of
Introduction to Economics
in the B.Sc. in Economics
of the University of Bonn.
During the fall of 2018, I was teaching the first half of
Macroeconomics
in the M.Sc. in Economics
of the University of Bonn.
In spring 2019, I will teach a course on Firm Debt and Macroeconomics
in the Macroeconomic Policy and Financial Markets Program
of the Barcelona GSE.
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