IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fednsr/837.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Cournot Fire Sales

Author

Abstract

In standard Walrasian macro-finance models, pecuniary externalities due to fire sales lead to excessive borrowing and insufficient liquidity holdings. We investigate whether imperfect competition (Cournot) improves welfare through internalizing the externality and find that this is far from guaranteed. Cournot competition can overcorrect the inefficiently high borrowing in a standard model of levered real investment. In contrast, Cournot competition can exacerbate the inefficiently low liquidity in a standard model of financial portfolio choice. Implications for welfare and regulation are therefore sector-specific, depending both on the nature of the shocks and the competitiveness of the industry.

Suggested Citation

  • Thomas M. Eisenbach & Gregory Phelan, 2018. "Cournot Fire Sales," Staff Reports 837, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fednsr:837
    Note: Revised November 2020. Previous title: “Cournot Fire Sales in Real and Financial Markets”
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/staff_reports/sr837.html
    File Function: Summary
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff_reports/sr837.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. Douglas W. Diamond & Raghuram G. Rajan, 2011. "Fear of Fire Sales, Illiquidity Seeking, and Credit Freezes," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 126(2), pages 557-591.
    3. Giancarlo Corsetti & Amil Dasgupta & Stephen Morris & Hyun Song Shin, 2004. "Does One Soros Make a Difference? A Theory of Currency Crises with Large and Small Traders," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 71(1), pages 87-113.
    4. Bengt Holmstrom & Jean Tirole, 1998. "Private and Public Supply of Liquidity," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 106(1), pages 1-40, February.
    5. Gromb, Denis & Vayanos, Dimitri, 2002. "Equilibrium and welfare in markets with financially constrained arbitrageurs," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(2-3), pages 361-407.
    6. Lemmen, J.J.G., 1994. "An introduction to the Diamond-Dybvig model (1983)," Other publications TiSEM 55bf4c27-2499-4537-afe9-2, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    7. 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.
    8. Andrei Shleifer & Robert Vishny, 2011. "Fire Sales in Finance and Macroeconomics," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 25(1), pages 29-48, Winter.
    9. Perotti, Enrico C. & Suarez, Javier, 2002. "Last bank standing: What do I gain if you fail?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(9), pages 1599-1622, October.
    10. Caballero, Ricardo J. & Krishnamurthy, Arvind, 2001. "International and domestic collateral constraints in a model of emerging market crises," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(3), pages 513-548, December.
    11. Geanakoplos, J. & Polemarchakis, H., 1985. "Existence,regularity, and constrained suboptimality of competitive allocations when the asset market is incomplete," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 1985037, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    12. Guido Lorenzoni, 2008. "Inefficient Credit Booms," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 75(3), pages 809-833.
    13. Frederic Malherbe, 2014. "Self-Fulfilling Liquidity Dry-Ups," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 69(2), pages 947-970, April.
    14. Dávila, Eduardo & Walther, Ansgar, 2020. "Does size matter? Bailouts with large and small banks," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 136(1), pages 1-22.
    15. Emmanuel Farhi & Mikhail Golosov & Aleh Tsyvinski, 2009. "A Theory of Liquidity and Regulation of Financial Intermediation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 76(3), pages 973-992.
    16. Bruce C. Greenwald & Joseph E. Stiglitz, 1986. "Externalities in Economies with Imperfect Information and Incomplete Markets," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 101(2), pages 229-264.
    17. Zhiguo He & Péter Kondor, 2016. "Inefficient Investment Waves," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 84, pages 735-780, March.
    18. Franklin Allen & Douglas Gale, 2004. "Financial Intermediaries and Markets," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 72(4), pages 1023-1061, July.
    19. John Geanakoplos & Kieran James Walsh, 2017. "Inefficient Liquidity Provision," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 2077, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    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. Zhiguo He & Péter Kondor, 2016. "Inefficient Investment Waves," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 84, pages 735-780, March.
    2. Mirza, Afrasiab & Stephens, Eric, 2022. "Securitization and aggregate investment efficiency," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 52(C).
    3. Gazi I Kara & S Mehmet Ozsoy & Itay Goldstein, 2020. "Bank Regulation under Fire Sale Externalities," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 33(6), pages 2554-2584.
    4. Gersbach, Hans & Rochet, Jean-Charles, 2017. "Capital regulation and credit fluctuations," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 113-124.
    5. Brunnermeier, Markus K. & Oehmke, Martin, 2013. "Bubbles, Financial Crises, and Systemic Risk," 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 1221-1288, Elsevier.
    6. Jeremy C. Stein, 2011. "Monetary Policy as Financial-Stability Regulation," NBER Working Papers 16883, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Kilenthong, Weerachart T. & Townsend, Robert M., 2011. "Information-constrained optima with retrading: An externality and its market-based solution," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 146(3), pages 1042-1077, May.
    8. Kurlat, Pablo, 2021. "Investment externalities in models of fire sales," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 102-118.
    9. Douglas Gale & Tanju Yorulmazer, 2020. "Bank capital, fire sales, and the social value of deposits," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 69(4), pages 919-963, June.
    10. Stijn Claessens & M Ayhan Kose, 2018. "Frontiers of macrofinancial linkages," BIS Papers, Bank for International Settlements, number 95.
    11. Christoph Bertsch & Mike Mariathasan, 2021. "Optimal bank leverage and recapitalization in crowded markets," BIS Working Papers 923, Bank for International Settlements.
    12. Gazi I. Kara & S. Mehmet Ozsoy, 2016. "Bank regulation under fire sale externalities," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2016-026, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    13. Weerachart Kilenthong & Robert Townsend, 2014. "Segregated Security Exchanges with Ex Ante Rights to Trade: A Market-Based Solution to Collateral-Constrained Externalities," NBER Working Papers 20086, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Weerachart T. Kilenthong & Robert M. Townsend, 2014. "A Market Based Solution to Price Externalities: A Generalized Framework," NBER Working Papers 20275, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Ansgar Walther, 2016. "Jointly Optimal Regulation of Bank Capital and Liquidity," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 48(2-3), pages 415-448, March.
    16. Bachmann, Manuel, 2018. "Market Illiquidity, Credit Freezes and Endogenous Funding Constraints," Department of Economics Working Paper Series 255, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    17. Arvind Krishnamurthy, 2010. "Amplification Mechanisms in Liquidity Crises," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(3), pages 1-30, July.
    18. Choi, Dong Beom & Eisenbach, Thomas M. & Yorulmazer, Tanju, 2021. "Watering a lemon tree: Heterogeneous risk taking and monetary policy transmission," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 47(C).
    19. Viral V. Acharya & S. Viswanathan, 2011. "Leverage, Moral Hazard, and Liquidity," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(1), pages 99-138, February.
    20. Manuel Bachmann, 2018. "Market Illiquidity, Credit Freezes and Endogenous Funding Constraints," Department of Economics Working Papers wuwp255, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    liquidity; fire sales; overinvestment; financial regulations; macroprudential regulations;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection
    • D62 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Externalities
    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
    • G18 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:fip:fednsr:837. 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: Gabriella Bucciarelli (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbnyus.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.