Revisiting overborrowing and its policy implications

Gianluca Benigno, Huigang Chen, Christopher Otrok, Alessandro Rebucci and Eric Young

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: This paper analyzes quantitatively the extent to which there is overborrowing (i.e., inefficient borrowing) in a business cycle model for emerging market economies with production and an occasionally binding credit constraint. The main finding of the analysis is that overborrowing is not a robust feature of this class of model economies: it depends on the structure of the economy and its parametrization. Specifically, we find underborrowing in a production economy with our baseline calibration, but overborrowing with more impatient agents and more volatile shocks. Endowment economies display overborrowing regardless of parameter values, but they do not allow for policy intervention when the constraint binds (in crisis times). Quantitatively, the welfare gains from implementing the constrained-efficient allocation are always larger near crisis times than in normal ones. In production economies, they are one order of magnitude larger than in endowment economies both i n crisis and normal times. This suggests that the scope for economy-wide macro-prudential policy interventions (e.g. prudential taxation of capital flows and capital controls) is weak in this class of models.

Keywords: bailouts; financial frictions; macro prudential policies; overborrowing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E52 F37 F41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2010-10-01
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http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/121730/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Chapter: Revisiting Overborrowing and its Policy Implications (2011)
Working Paper: Revisiting Overborrowing and Its Policy Implications (2010)
Working Paper: Revisiting Overborrowing and its Policy Implications (2010)
Working Paper: Revisiting Overborrowing and its Policy Implications (2010)
Working Paper: Revisiting Overborrowing and Its Policy Implications (2010)
Working Paper: Revisiting Overborrowing and its Policy Implications (2010)
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