Financial Stability, Growth, and Macroprudential Policy

Many emerging market economies have used macroprudential policy to mitigate the risk of financial crises and the resulting output losses. However, macroprudential policy may reduce economic growth in good times. This paper introduces endogenous growth into a small open economy model with occasionally binding collateral constraints in order to study the impact of macroprudential policy on financial stability and growth. In a calibrated version of the model, I find that optimal macroprudential policy reduces the probability of crisis by two thirds at the cost of lowering average growth by a small amount (0.01 percentage point). Moreover, macroprudential policy can generate welfare gains equivalent to a 0.06 percent permanent increase in annual consumption.