IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/srk/srkwps/2019100.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Fire-sales in frozen markets

Author

Listed:
  • Ebrahimy, Ehsan

Abstract

It is challenging to explain the collapse in the price of subprime mortgage-backed securities (MBS) during the Financial Crisis of 2008, using the existing models of fire sale. I present a model to demonstrate that fire sales may happen even when there is a relatively sizable pool of natural buyers and in the absence of asymmetric information, due to a coordination failure among buyers: buyers’ waiting to trade at a lower price tomorrow, can lead to a collapse in the price and trade volume today. In particular, I show that when trade is decentralized and participation is endogenous, a medium level of asset demand and liquidity needs that are expected to increase over time create complementarity among buyers’ decisions to wait. This complementarity makes competitive markets prone to coordination failures and fire sales accompanied by a collapse in the trade volume. Fire sales may also be inefficient. I also discuss various policy options to eliminate the risk of fire sales in such a setup. JEL Classification: G01, G12, D61, D62, D83, E44

Suggested Citation

  • Ebrahimy, Ehsan, 2019. "Fire-sales in frozen markets," ESRB Working Paper Series 100, European Systemic Risk Board.
    • Handle: RePEc:srk:srkwps:2019100
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.esrb.europa.eu//pub/pdf/wp/esrb.wp100~5e72d55ea0.en.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dimitri Vayanos & Pierre‐Olivier Weill, 2008. "A Search‐Based Theory of the On‐the‐Run Phenomenon," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(3), pages 1361-1398, June.
    2. Loon, Yee Cheng & Zhong, Zhaodong (Ken), 2016. "Does Dodd-Frank affect OTC transaction costs and liquidity? Evidence from real-time CDS trade reports," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(3), pages 645-672.
    3. Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W, 1992. "Liquidation Values and Debt Capacity: A Market Equilibrium Approach," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(4), pages 1343-1366, September.
    4. Obstfeld, Maurice, 1996. "Models of currency crises with self-fulfilling features," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(3-5), pages 1037-1047, April.
    5. Gary B. Gorton, 2010. "Questions and Answers about the Financial Crisis," NBER Working Papers 15787, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Antonio E. Bernardo & Ivo Welch, 2004. "Liquidity and Financial Market Runs," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(1), pages 135-158.
    7. Briana Chang, 2018. "Adverse Selection and Liquidity Distortion," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 85(1), pages 275-306.
    8. Sergey Chernenko & Samuel G. Hanson & Adi Sunderam, 2014. "The Rise and Fall of Demand for Securitizations," NBER Working Papers 20777, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Eduardo Dávila & Anton Korinek, 2018. "Pecuniary Externalities in Economies with Financial Frictions," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 85(1), pages 352-395.
    10. Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W, 1997. "The Limits of Arbitrage," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(1), pages 35-55, March.
    11. Hanson, Samuel G. & Sunderam, Adi, 2013. "Are there too many safe securities? Securitization and the incentives for information production," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(3), pages 565-584.
    12. James Dow & Jungsuk Han, 2018. "The Paradox of Financial Fire Sales: The Role of Arbitrage Capital in Determining Liquidity," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 73(1), pages 229-274, February.
    13. Jacob Boudoukh & Jordan Brooks & Matthew Richardson & Zhikai Xu, 2016. "The Complexity of Liquidity: The Extraordinary Case of Sovereign Bonds," NBER Working Papers 22576, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Darrell Duffie, 2010. "Presidential Address: Asset Price Dynamics with Slow‐Moving Capital," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 65(4), pages 1237-1267, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mr. Ehsan Ebrahimy, 2019. "Fire Sales in Frozen Markets," IMF Working Papers 2019/092, International Monetary Fund.
    2. Cristina Cella & Andrew Ellul & Mariassunta Giannetti, 2013. "Investors' Horizons and the Amplification of Market Shocks," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 26(7), pages 1607-1648.
    3. Vayanos, Dimitri & Wang, Jiang, 2013. "Market Liquidity—Theory and Empirical Evidence ," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1289-1361, Elsevier.
    4. Abbassi, Puriya & Iyer, Rajkamal & Peydró, José-Luis & Tous, Francesc R., 2016. "Securities trading by banks and credit supply: Micro-evidence from the crisis," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(3), pages 569-594.
    5. Andrew Ang & Dimitris Papanikolaou & Mark M. Westerfield, 2014. "Portfolio Choice with Illiquid Assets," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(11), pages 2737-2761, November.
    6. He, Zhiguo & Kelly, Bryan & Manela, Asaf, 2017. "Intermediary asset pricing: New evidence from many asset classes," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(1), pages 1-35.
    7. Viral V. Acharya & Hyun Song Shin & Tanju Yorulmazer, 2011. "Crisis Resolution and Bank Liquidity," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(6), pages 2166-2205.
    8. Assaf Razin & Itay Goldstein, 2012. "Review Of Theories of Financial Crises," 2012 Meeting Papers 214, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    9. Vuillemey, Guillaume, 2023. "Mitigating fire sales with a central clearing counterparty," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 55(C).
    10. Antonio Falato & Itay Goldstein & Ali Hortaçsu, 2020. "Financial Fragility in the COVID-19 Crisis: The Case of Investment Funds in Corporate Bond Markets," Working Papers 2020-98, Becker Friedman Institute for Research In Economics.
    11. Larrain, Borja & Muñoz, Daniel & Tessada, José, 2017. "Asset fire sales in equity markets: Evidence from a quasi-natural experiment," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 71-85.
    12. Ilhyock Shim & Goetz von Peter, 2007. "Distress selling and asset market feedback," BIS Working Papers 229, Bank for International Settlements.
    13. Weill, Pierre-Olivier, 2020. "The search theory of OTC markets," CEPR Discussion Papers 14847, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    14. Jiangze Bian & Zhiguo He & Kelly Shue & Hao Zhou, 2018. "Leverage-Induced Fire Sales and Stock Market Crashes," NBER Working Papers 25040, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Antonio Falato & Ali Hortaçsu & Dan Li & Chaehee Shin, 2021. "Fire‐Sale Spillovers in Debt Markets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 76(6), pages 3055-3102, December.
    16. Sergey Chernenko & Samuel G. Hanson & Adi Sunderam, 2014. "The Rise and Fall of Demand for Securitizations," NBER Working Papers 20777, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. ÅžimÅŸek, Alp, 2021. "The Macroeconomics of Financial Speculation," CEPR Discussion Papers 15733, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    18. Jiakai Chen & Haoyang Liu & Asani Sarkar & Zhaogang Song, 2020. "Dealers and the Dealer of Last Resort: Evidence from the Agency MBS Markets in the COVID-19 Crisis," Staff Reports 933, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    19. Falato, Antonio & Goldstein, Itay & Hortaçsu, Ali, 2021. "Financial fragility in the COVID-19 crisis: The case of investment funds in corporate bond markets," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 35-52.
    20. Patrick Augustin & Jan Schnitzler, 2021. "Disentangling types of liquidity and testing limits‐to‐arbitrage theories in the CDS–bond basis," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 27(1), pages 120-146, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    competitive search; coordination failure; decentralized markets; fire-sales;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G01 - Financial Economics - - General - - - Financial Crises
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • D61 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Allocative Efficiency; Cost-Benefit Analysis
    • D62 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Externalities
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:srk:srkwps:2019100. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Official Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/esrbede.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.