Credit, Bankruptcy, and Aggregate Fluctuations / Makoto Nakajima, José-Víctor Ríos-Rull.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Nakajima, Makoto.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Ríos-Rull, José-Víctor.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w20617.

NBER working paper series no. w20617

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2014.

Summary:

We ask two questions related to how access to credit affects the nature of business cycles. First, does the standard theory of unsecured credit account for the high volatility and procyclicality of credit and the high volatility and countercyclicality of bankruptcy filings found in U.S. data? Yes, it does, but only if we explicitly model recessions as displaying countercyclical earnings risk (i.e., rather than having all households fare slightly worse than normal during recessions, we ensure that more households than normal fare very poorly). Second, does access to credit smooth aggregate consumption or aggregate hours worked, and if so, does it matter with respect to the nature of business cycles? No, it does not; in fact, consumption is 20 percent more volatile when credit is available. The interest rate premia increase in recessions because of higher bankruptcy risk discouraging households from using credit. This finding contradicts the intuition that access to credit helps households to smooth their consumption.

Notes:

Print version record

October 2014.