Financial System Risk and Flight to Quality / Ricardo Caballero, Arvind Krishnamurthy.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Caballero, Ricardo.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Krishnamurthy, Arvind.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w11834.

NBER working paper series no. w11834

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2005.

Summary:

We present a model of flight to quality episodes that emphasizes financial system risk and the Knightian uncertainty surrounding these episodes. In the model, agents are uncertain about the probability distribution of shocks in markets different from theirs, treating such uncertainty as Knightian. Aversion to this uncertainty generates demand for safe financial claims. It also leads agents to require financial intermediaries to lock-up capital to cover their own markets' shocks in a manner that is robust to uncertainty over other markets. These actions are wasteful in the aggregate and can trigger a financial accelerator. A lender of last resort can unlock private capital markets to stabilize the economy during these episodes by committing to intervene should conditions worsen.

Notes:

Print version record

December 2005.