IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/red/sed015/1403.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Bank Capital, Bank Credit and Unemployment

Author

Listed:
  • Giorgia Piacentino

    (Olin Business School at Washington University in St Louis)

  • Anjan Thakor

    (olin school of business)

  • Jason Donaldson

    (Washington University in St Louis)

Abstract

Since the worst employment slumps follow periods of high household debt and almost all household debt is provided by banks, there is a natural link between bank lending and employment. Building on this, we theoretically investigate whether bank regulation can play a role in stimulating employment. Using a competitive search model, we find that levered households suffer from a debt overhang problem that distorts their preferences, making them demand high wages. In general equilibrium, firms internalize these preferences and post high wages but few vacancies. This vacancy-posting effect implies that high household debt leads to high unemployment. Unemployed households default on their debt. In equilibrium, the level of household debt is inefficiently high due to a household-debt externality--banks fail to internalize the effect that household leverage has on household default probabilities via the vacancy-posting effect. As a result, household debt levels are inefficiently high. Our results suggest that a combina- tion of loan-to-value caps for households and capital requirements for banks can elevate employment and improve efficiency, providing an alternative to monetary policy for labor market intervention.

Suggested Citation

  • Giorgia Piacentino & Anjan Thakor & Jason Donaldson, 2015. "Bank Capital, Bank Credit and Unemployment," 2015 Meeting Papers 1403, Society for Economic Dynamics.
  • Handle: RePEc:red:sed015:1403
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://red-files-public.s3.amazonaws.com/meetpapers/2015/paper_1403.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mr. Giovanni Dell'Ariccia & Mr. Pau Rabanal & Mr. Christopher W. Crowe & Ms. Deniz O Igan, 2011. "Policies for Macrofinancial Stability: Options to Deal with Real Estate Booms," IMF Staff Discussion Notes 2011/002, International Monetary Fund.
    2. Berger, Allen N. & Bouwman, Christa H.S., 2013. "How does capital affect bank performance during financial crises?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(1), pages 146-176.
    3. Veronica Guerrieri & Guido Lorenzoni, 2017. "Credit Crises, Precautionary Savings, and the Liquidity Trap," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 132(3), pages 1427-1467.
    4. William Adams & Liran Einav & Jonathan Levin, 2009. "Liquidity Constraints and Imperfect Information in Subprime Lending," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(1), pages 49-84, March.
    5. Daron Acemoglu & Robert Shimer, 1999. "Efficient Unemployment Insurance," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(5), pages 893-928, October.
    6. Philippon, Thomas & Midrigan, Virgiliu, 2011. "Household Leverage and the Recession," CEPR Discussion Papers 8381, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    7. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2003_019 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Donatella Gatti & Christophe Rault & Anne-Gael Vaubourg, 2012. "Unemployment and finance: how do financial and labour market factors interact?," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 64(3), pages 464-489, July.
    9. Bengt Holmstrom & Jean Tirole, 1997. "Financial Intermediation, Loanable Funds, and The Real Sector," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(3), pages 663-691.
    10. Moritz Schularick & Alan M. Taylor, 2012. "Credit Booms Gone Bust: Monetary Policy, Leverage Cycles, and Financial Crises, 1870-2008," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(2), pages 1029-1061, April.
    11. Ono, Arito & Uchida, Hirofumi & Udell, Gregory F. & Uesugi, Iichiro, 2021. "Lending pro-cyclicality and macroprudential policy: Evidence from Japanese LTV ratios," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    12. Arnoud W. A. Boot & Anjan V. Thakor, 2000. "Can Relationship Banking Survive Competition?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(2), pages 679-713, April.
    13. Acemoglu, Daron, 2001. "Credit market imperfections and persistent unemployment," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 45(4-6), pages 665-679, May.
    14. Tri Vi Dang & Gary Gorton & Bengt Holmström & Guillermo Ordoñez, 2017. "Banks as Secret Keepers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(4), pages 1005-1029, April.
    15. Claudio Borio & Ilhyock Shim, 2007. "What can (macro-)prudential policy do to support monetary policy?," BIS Working Papers 242, Bank for International Settlements.
    16. Serena Ng & Jonathan H. Wright, 2013. "Facts and Challenges from the Great Recession for Forecasting and Macroeconomic Modeling," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 51(4), pages 1120-1154, December.
    17. Callum Jones & Virgiliu Midrigan & Thomas Philippon, 2022. "Household Leverage and the Recession," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 90(5), pages 2471-2505, September.
    18. Hamid Mehran, 2011. "Bank Capital and Value in the Cross-Section," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(4), pages 1019-1067.
    19. Koskela, Erkki & Stenbacka, Rune, 2003. "Equilibrium Unemployment Under Negotiated Profit Sharing," IZA Discussion Papers 840, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    20. 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.
    21. Tito Boeri & Pietro Garibaldi & Espen R. Moen, 2012. "The Labor Market Consequences of Adverse Financial Shocks," Working Papers 451, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    22. Moen, Espen R, 1997. "Competitive Search Equilibrium," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(2), pages 385-411, April.
    23. Anjan V. Thakor, 2014. "Bank Capital and Financial Stability: An Economic Trade-Off or a Faustian Bargain?," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 6(1), pages 185-223, December.
    24. Arthur J. Hosios, 1990. "On The Efficiency of Matching and Related Models of Search and Unemployment," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 57(2), pages 279-298.
    25. Nguyen, Thien Tung, 2014. "Bank Capital Requirements: A Quantitative Analysis," Working Paper Series 2015-14, Ohio State University, Charles A. Dice Center for Research in Financial Economics.
    26. Giovanni Dell'Ariccia & Pau Rabanal & Christopher W. Crowe & Deniz O Igan, 2011. "Policies for Macrofinancial Stability; Options to Deal with Real Estate Booms," IMF Staff Discussion Notes 11/02, International Monetary Fund.
    27. Zachary Bethune & Guillaume Rocheteau & Peter Rupert, 2015. "Aggregate Unemployment and Household Unsecured Debt," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 18(1), pages 77-100, January.
    28. Francisco Buera & Roberto Fattal-Jaef & Yongseok Shin, 2015. "Anatomy of a Credit Crunch: From Capital to Labor Markets," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 18(1), pages 101-117, January.
    29. Frederic S. Mishkin, 1977. "What Depressed the Consumer? The Household Balance Sheet and the 1973-75 Recession," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 8(1), pages 123-174.
    30. Donatella Gatti & Christophe Rault & Anne-Gael Vaubourg, 2012. "Unemployment and finance: how do financial and labour market factors interact?," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 64(3), pages 464-489, July.
    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. Shai Bernstein & Timothy McQuade & Richard R. Townsend, 2017. "Do Household Wealth Shocks Affect Productivity? Evidence from Innovative Workers During the Great Recession," NBER Working Papers 24011, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Brown, Jennifer & Matsa, David A., 2020. "Locked in by leverage: Job search during the housing crisis," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 136(3), pages 623-648.
    3. Bednarzik, Robert W. & Kern, Andreas & Hisnanick, John J., 2017. "Displacement and Debt: The Role of Debt in Returning to Work in the Period Following the Great Recession," IZA Discussion Papers 10764, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    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. Zhen Huo & Jose-Victor Rios-Rull, 2015. "Tightening Financial Frictions on Households, Recessions, and Price Reallocations," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 18(1), pages 118-139, January.
    2. Òscar Jordá & Moritz Schularick & Alan M. Taylor, 2016. "Sovereigns Versus Banks: Credit, Crises, and Consequences," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 14(1), pages 45-79.
    3. Mark Gertler & Simon Gilchrist, 2018. "What Happened: Financial Factors in the Great Recession," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 32(3), pages 3-30, Summer.
    4. Guerrieri, V. & Uhlig, H., 2016. "Housing and Credit Markets," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1427-1496, Elsevier.
    5. Guerrieri, Luca & Iacoviello, Matteo, 2017. "Collateral constraints and macroeconomic asymmetries," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 28-49.
    6. Borsi, Mihály Tamás, 2018. "Credit contractions and unemployment," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 573-593.
    7. Angeles, Luis, 2015. "A note on debt and economic activity," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 67-69.
    8. Lo, Andrew W. & Thakor, Richard T., 2023. "Financial intermediation and the funding of biomedical innovation: A review," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    9. Mehrotra, Neil & Sergeyev, Dmitriy, 2021. "Financial shocks, firm credit and the Great Recession," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 296-315.
    10. Jonathan Zinman, 2014. "Consumer Credit: Too Much or Too Little (or Just Right)?," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 43(S2), pages 209-237.
    11. Stijn Claessens & M Ayhan Kose, 2018. "Frontiers of macrofinancial linkages," BIS Papers, Bank for International Settlements, number 95.
    12. Mikel Bedayo & Gabriel Jiménez & José-Luis Peydró & Raquel Vegas, 2020. "Screening and Loan Origination Time: Lending Standards, Loan Defaults and Bank Failures," Working Papers 1215, Barcelona School of Economics.
    13. Matthew Rognlie & Andrei Shleifer & Alp Simsek, 2018. "Investment Hangover and the Great Recession," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 10(2), pages 113-153, April.
    14. Kyle Herkenhoff, 2016. "The Impact of Consumer Credit Access on Employment, Earnings and Entrepreneurship," 2016 Meeting Papers 781, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    15. Benigno, Pierpaolo & Romei, Federica, 2014. "Debt deleveraging and the exchange rate," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(1), pages 1-16.
    16. Shekhar Aiyar & Charles W. Calomiris & Tomasz Wieladek, 2015. "How to Strengthen the Regulation of Bank Capital: Theory, Evidence, and A Proposal," Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, Morgan Stanley, vol. 27(1), pages 27-36, March.
    17. Cristina Arellano & Yan Bai & Patrick J. Kehoe, 2019. "Financial Frictions and Fluctuations in Volatility," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 127(5), pages 2049-2103.
    18. Alejandro Justiniano & Giorgio Primiceri & Andrea Tambalotti, 2015. "Household leveraging and deleveraging," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 18(1), pages 3-20, January.
    19. Paul-Olivier Klein & Rima Turk-Ariss, 2022. "Bank capital and economic activity," Post-Print hal-03955630, HAL.
    20. David Berger & Veronica Guerrieri & Guido Lorenzoni & Joseph Vavra, 2018. "House Prices and Consumer Spending," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 85(3), pages 1502-1542.

    More about this item

    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:red:sed015:1403. 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: Christian Zimmermann (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sedddea.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.