IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aejmac/v10y2018i4p202-33.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Low Real Interest Rates, Collateral Misrepresentation, and Monetary Policy

Author

Listed:
  • Stephen D. Williamson

Abstract

A model is constructed in which households and banks have incentives to fake the quality of collateral. These incentive problems matter when collateral is scarce in the aggregate—when real interest rates are low. Conventional monetary easing can exacerbate these problems, in that the misrepresentation of collateral becomes more profitable, thus increasing haircuts and interest rate differentials. Central bank purchases of private mortgages may not be feasible, due to misrepresentation of asset quality. If feasible, central bank asset purchase programs work by circumventing suboptimal fiscal policy, not by mitigating incentive problems in asset markets.

Suggested Citation

  • Stephen D. Williamson, 2018. "Low Real Interest Rates, Collateral Misrepresentation, and Monetary Policy," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 10(4), pages 202-233, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aejmac:v:10:y:2018:i:4:p:202-33
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/mac.20150035
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/mac.20150035
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrieve=GQ85o7imapx3oGm_nk-a4Je1motyNCHR
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Peter Karadi & Mark Gertler, 2012. "Large Scale Asset Purchases as a Tool of Monetary Policy," 2012 Meeting Papers 904, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    2. Yiting Li & Guillaume Rocheteau & Pierre-Olivier Weill, 2012. "Liquidity and the Threat of Fraudulent Assets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 120(5), pages 000.
    3. Guillaume Rocheteau & Randall Wright, 2005. "Money in Search Equilibrium, in Competitive Equilibrium, and in Competitive Search Equilibrium," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 73(1), pages 175-202, January.
    4. Venky Venkateswaran & Randall Wright, 2014. "Pledgability and Liquidity: A New Monetarist Model of Financial and Macroeconomic Activity," NBER Macroeconomics Annual, University of Chicago Press, vol. 28(1), pages 227-270.
    5. John Moore & Nobuhiro Kiyotaki, 2008. "Liquidity, Business Cycles, and Monetary Policy," 2008 Meeting Papers 35, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    6. Ricardo Lagos & Randall Wright, 2005. "A Unified Framework for Monetary Theory and Policy Analysis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 113(3), pages 463-484, June.
    7. Geromichalos, Athanasios & Herrenbrueck, Lucas M. & Salyer, Kevin D., 2016. "A search-theoretic model of the term premium," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 11(3), September.
    8. Stephen D. Williamson, 2012. "Liquidity, Monetary Policy, and the Financial Crisis: A New Monetarist Approach," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(6), pages 2570-2605, October.
    9. Sanches, Daniel & Williamson, Stephen, 2010. "Money and credit with limited commitment and theft," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 145(4), pages 1525-1549, July.
    10. Rocheteau, Guillaume & Rodriguez-Lopez, Antonio, 2014. "Liquidity provision, interest rates, and unemployment," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 80-101.
    11. Geromichalos, Athanasios & Herrenbrueck, Lucas M. & Salyer, Kevin D., 2016. "A search-theoretic model of the term premium," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 11(3), September.
    12. Douglas W. Diamond & Philip H. Dybvig, 2000. "Bank runs, deposit insurance, and liquidity," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, vol. 24(Win), pages 14-23.
    13. Gauti B. Eggertsson & Paul Krugman, 2012. "Debt, Deleveraging, and the Liquidity Trap: A Fisher-Minsky-Koo Approach," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 127(3), pages 1469-1513.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Williamson, Stephen D., 2022. "Central bank digital currency and flight to safety," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 142(C).
    2. Kang, Kee-Youn, 2021. "Optimal contract for asset trades: Collateralizing or selling?," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 56(C).
    3. Williamson, Stephen, 2024. "Deposit insurance, bank regulation, and narrow banking," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 219(C).
    4. Stephen Williamson, 2019. "Neo‐Fisherism and inflation control," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 52(3), pages 882-913, August.
    5. Stephen Williamson, 2019. "Low real interest rates and the zero lower bound," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 31, pages 36-62, January.
    6. Andolfatto, David & Williamson, Stephen, 2015. "Scarcity of safe assets, inflation, and the policy trap," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 70-92.
    7. Fatih Tuluk, 2021. "Collateral Misrepresentation, External Auditing, and Optimal Supervisory Policy," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 32(5), pages 975-1016, November.

    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. Stephen Williamson, 2014. "Central Bank Purchases of Private Assets," 2014 Meeting Papers 208, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    2. Williamson, Stephen D., 2016. "Scarce collateral, the term premium, and quantitative easing," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 164(C), pages 136-165.
    3. Athanasios Geromichalos & Lucas Herrenbrueck, 2017. "The Liquidity-Augmented Model of Macroeconomic Aggregates," Discussion Papers dp17-16, Department of Economics, Simon Fraser University.
    4. Athanasios Geromichalos & Lucas Herrenbrueck, 2022. "The Liquidity-Augmented Model of Macroeconomic Aggregates: A New Monetarist DSGE Approach," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 45, pages 134-167, July.
    5. Berentsen, Aleksander & Huber, Samuel & Marchesiani, Alessandro, 2016. "The societal benefit of a financial transaction tax," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 303-323.
    6. Lukas Altermatt, 2022. "Inside Money, Investment, And Unconventional Monetary Policy," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 63(4), pages 1527-1560, November.
    7. Guillaume Rocheteau & Randall Wright & Cathy Zhang, 2018. "Corporate Finance and Monetary Policy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(4-5), pages 1147-1186, April.
    8. Zachary Bethune & Guillaume Rocheteau & Tsz-Nga Wong & Cathy Zhang, 2022. "Lending Relationships and Optimal Monetary Policy," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 89(4), pages 1833-1872.
    9. Rocheteau, Guillaume & Wright, Randall & Xiaolin Xiao, Sylvia, 2018. "Open market operations," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 114-128.
    10. Athanasios Geromichalos & Lucas Herrenbrueck & Sukjoon Lee, 2023. "The Strategic Determination of the Supply of Liquid Assets," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 49, pages 1-36, July.
    11. Herrenbrueck, Lucas & Geromichalos, Athanasios, 2017. "A tractable model of indirect asset liquidity," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 168(C), pages 252-260.
    12. Chao Gu & Fabrizio Mattesini & Randall Wright, 2016. "Money and Credit Redux," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 84, pages 1-32, January.
    13. Herrenbrueck, Lucas, 2014. "Quantitative Easing and the Liquidity Channel of Monetary Policy," MPRA Paper 70686, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 10 Apr 2016.
    14. Matsuoka, Tarishi, 2022. "Asset prices and standing facilities in a monetary economy," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    15. Hu, Tai-Wei, 2021. "Optimal monetary policy with interest on reserves and capital over-accumulation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).
    16. Carli, Francesco & Gomis-Porqueras, Pedro, 2021. "Real consequences of open market operations: The role of limited commitment," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    17. Athanasios Geromichalos & Kuk Mo Jung, 2019. "Monetary policy and efficiency in over-the-counter financial trade," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 52(4), pages 1699-1754, November.
    18. Kee-Youn Kang, 2019. "Central Bank purchases of private assets: An evaluation," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 31, pages 326-346, January.
    19. Chao He & Randall Wright & Yu Zhu, 2015. "Housing and Liquidity," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 18(3), pages 435-455, July.
    20. Athanasios Geromichalos & Lucas Herrenbrueck, 2016. "Monetary Policy, Asset Prices, and Liquidity in Over‐the‐Counter Markets," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 48(1), pages 35-79, February.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E43 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Interest Rates: Determination, Term Structure, and Effects
    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
    • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies
    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory
    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages

    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:aea:aejmac:v:10:y:2018:i:4:p:202-33. 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: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.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.