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Recently, China has witnessed a continuously increasing Debt-to-GDP ratio and a vigorously expanding shadow banking sector. Housing prices hovering at a high level seriously affect the lives of ordinary residents. Disappointingly, a variety of activities such as intense deleveraging campaigns and tight monetary controls produce little effect. Why do these seemingly rightful implementations hardly work? What should governments do to stop the incessant expansion of asset bubbles? What role ought financial supervisors to play in regulating credit markets and facilitating a sustainable and inclusive economic growth? This paper sets off from the pledgeability of asset bubbles and constructs a generalized overlapping generation (OLG) model incorporating financial frictions and collateral constraints, in order to explore the bubble evolution under the alterations of market interest rates and credit conditions. The results show a unique bubble equilibrium, in which the steady-state bubble size expands when interest rate increases. Numerical results further reveal that the bubble-inflation effect of a higher interest rate is reinforced by a more stringent collateral constraint. Our research contributes to an explanation of the inefficacy of present policies and provides the following policy implications: The combination of an interest rate elevation and a strong loan restriction is in fact undesirable for suppressing asset bubbles. Not merely does it strike productivity and capital formation, but it also fosters investors to hold more risky assets to solve liquidity shortage under constrained borrowing capacity.

This paper presents a model of portfolio management with reputation concerns in imperfect capital markets. Managers with financial constraints raise funds from investors and select a project that is characterized by the degree of risk. Managers differ in their ability to etermine the probability of success. Based on past performance, all agents revise beliefs about managers’ ability, and the beliefs affect the availability of funds in the future. This provides motivation for managers to build reputation by manipulating their performance through project selection. We show that the quality of investor protection changes fund flows, thereby influencing managers’ project selection. Our model predicts that strong investor protection causes risk-taking behavior, whereas weak investor protection leads to risk-averse behavior.

A key lesson from the Great Recession is that firms’ leverage and access to finance are important for hiring and firing decisions. It is now empirically established that bank lending is correlated with employment losses when credit conditions deteriorate. We provide further evidence of this and make causal inferences on the effect of leverage on job losses drawing on a new firm-level dataset that we assembled on employment and financial positions of European firms. Yet, in the Diamond Mortensen Pissarides (DMP) model there is no role for finance. All projects that display positive net present values are realized and financial markets are assumed to be perfect. What if financial markets are not perfect? Does a different access to finance influence the firm’s hiring and firing decisions? The paper uses the concept of limited pledgeability proposed by Holmstrom and Tirole to integrate financial imperfections and labor market imperfections. A negative shock wipes out the firm’s physical capital and leads to job destruction unless internal cash was accumulated by firms. If firms hold liquid assets they may thus protect their search capital, defined as the cost of attracting and hiring workers. The paper explores the trade-off between size and precautionary cash holdings in both partial and general equilibrium. We find that if labor market frictions disappear, so does the motive for firms to hold liquidity. This suggests a fundamental complementarity between labor market frictions and holding of liquid assets by firms. 2, Forfatterversjon

Accepted at The Review of Economic Studies, This paper analyzes the existence and the effects of bubbles in an endogenous growth model with nancial frictions and heterogeneous investments. Bubbles are likely to emerge when the degree of pledgeability is in the middle range, implying that improving the nancial market might increase the potential for asset bubbles. Moreover, when the degree of pledgeability is relatively low, bubbles boost long-run growth; when it is relatively high, bubbles lower growth. Furthermore, we examine the effects of a bubble burst, and show that the effects depend on the degree of pledgeability, i.e., the quality of the nancial system. Finally, we conduct a full welfare analysis of asset bubbles., 基盤研究(S) = Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (S)

The Great Recession has indicated that firms' leverage and access to finance are important for hiring and firing decisions. It is now empirically established that bank lending is correlated to employment losses when credit conditions deteriorate. We provide further evidence of this drawing on a new dataset that we assembled on employment adjustment and financial positions of European firms. Yet, in the Diamond Mortensen Pissarides (DMP) model there is no role for finance. All projects that display positive net present values are realized and financial markets are assumed to be perfect. What if financial markets are not perfect? Does a different access to finance influence the firm's hiring and firing decisions? The paper uses the concept of limited pledgeability proposed by Holmstrom and Tirole to integrate financial imperfections and labor market imperfections. A negative shock wipes out the firm's physical capital and leads to job destruction unless internal liquidity was accumulated by firms. If firms hold liquid assets they may thus protect their search capital, defined as the cost of attracting and hiring workers. The paper explores the trade-off between size and precautionary liquidity holdings in both partial and general equilibrium. We find that if labor market frictions disappear, so does the motive for firms to hold liquidity. This suggests a fundamental complementarity between labor market frictions and holding of liquid assets by firms.

The Great Recession has indicated that firms' leverage and access to finance are important for hiring and firing decisions. It is now empirically established that bank lending is correlated to employment losses when credit conditions deteriorate. We provide further evidence of this drawing on a new dataset that we assembled on employment adjustment and financial positions of European firms. Yet, in the Diamond Mortensen Pissarides (DMP) model there is no role for finance. All projects that display positive net present values are realized and financial markets are assumed to be perfect. What if financial markets are not perfect? Does a different access to finance influence the firm's hiring and firing decisions? The paper uses the concept of limited pledgeability proposed by Holmstrom and Tirole to integrate financial imperfections and labor market imperfections. A negative shock wipes out the firm's physical capital and leads to job destruction unless internal cash was accumulated by firms. If firms hold liquid assets they may thus protect their em search capital, defined as the cost of attracting and hiring workers. The paper explores the trade off between size and precautionary cash holdings in both partial and general equilibrium. We find that if labor market frictions disappear, so does the motive for firms to hold liquidity. This suggests a fundamental complementarity between labor market frictions and holding of liquid assets by firms.