An examination of Liquidity Crunch in triggering and characterizing financial crises. Since the subprime mortgage crisis that began in 2007, advanced economies have felt a nagging sense of insecurity. In parallel, the profession has witnessed phenomena that are alien to mainstream macroeconomic models. Financial crises are systemic, occurring simultaneously in different economies. In this book, Guillermo Calvo focuses on liquidity factors as a commonality in financial crises. Specifically, he examines the role of “liquidity crunch” in triggering crises. He also identifies a fundamental (but overlooked) idea in Keynes's General Theory, termed by Calvo the price theory of money, to rationalize the resiliency of the U.S. dollar when other dollar-backed assets suffered a devastating liquidity crunch. Calvo shows that a sharp focus on liquidity reveals some characteristics of liquid assets that are easy to miss otherwise. He argues for liquidity's centrality, presenting what he calls the Liquidity Approach. He shows that simple extensions of standard monetary models help rationalize the implications of the liquidity crunch, and then examines slightly more technical models that highlight liquidity issues. He explores the empirical effects of liquidity crunch by studying systemic sudden stops (of capital inflows), presuming that they are triggered by liquidity crunch-type phenomena.

This thesis aims to study macroeconomic issues related to the dynamics, distribution and price of macroeconomic risks.The first chapter examines the effectiveness of different monetary policies in stabilizing asset prices in times of liquidity crisis. We propose a macro-finance model with heterogeneous banks subject to funding liquidity risk. When banks' equity capital is low, an endogenous haircut spiral emerges between the decline in asset prices and financing risks. The central bank can partially counter this dynamic with monetary policies. If the shadow banking sector is important, a large-scale asset purchase policy may be necessary to stabilize asset prices.The second chapter asks the question: how does productivity growth interact with financial cycles? In the years following the Great Recession, the diffusion of new innovations was particularly low, leading to low productivity growth. This work shows that this pattern can be rationalized in a standard macro-financial model with heterogeneous risk aversion when it is assumed that the implementation of new innovations is risky.In the third chapter, we propose a robust method for solving a large class of continuous-time dynamic general equilibrium models. We use a finite difference scheme to solve partial differential equation systems with multiple endogenous state variables in a short computation time.

This paper reviews the literature on financial crises focusing on three specific aspects. First, what are the main factors explaining financial crises? Since many theories on the sources of financial crises highlight the importance of sharp fluctuations in asset and credit markets, the paper briefly reviews theoretical and empirical studies on developments in these markets around financial crises. Second, what are the major types of financial crises? The paper focuses on the main theoretical and empirical explanations of four types of financial crises—currency crises, sudden stops, debt crises, and banking crises—and presents a survey of the literature that attempts to identify these episodes. Third, what are the real and financial sector implications of crises? The paper briefly reviews the short- and medium-run implications of crises for the real economy and financial sector. It concludes with a summary of the main lessons from the literature and future research directions.

An incisive overview of the macroeconomics of financial crises—essential reading for students and policy experts alike With alarming frequency, modern economies go through macro-financial crashes that arise from the financial sector and spread to the broader economy, inflicting deep and prolonged recessions. A Crash Course on Crises brings together the latest cutting-edge economic research to identify the seeds of these crashes, reveal their triggers and consequences, and explain what policymakers can do about them. Each of the book’s ten self-contained chapters introduces readers to a key economic force and provides case studies that illustrate how that force was dominant. Markus Brunnermeier and Ricardo Reis show how the run-up phase of a crisis often occurs in ways that are preventable but that may go unnoticed and discuss how debt contracts, banks, and a search for safety can act as triggers and amplifiers that drive the economy to crash. Brunnermeier and Reis then explain how monetary, fiscal, and exchange-rate policies can respond to crises and prevent them from becoming persistent. With case studies ranging from Chile in the 1970s to the COVID-19 pandemic, A Crash Course on Crises synthesizes a vast literature into ten simple, accessible ideas and illuminates these concepts using novel diagrams and a clear analytical framework.

How financial crises are inherent features of macroeconomic dynamics There are no bigger disruptions in the functioning of economies than financial crises. Yet prior to the crash of 2007–2008, macroeconomics incorporated financial crises simply as bad shocks, like earthquakes, failing to consider them as an intrinsic phenomenon of the evolution of macroeconomic variables, such as credit, investment, and productivity. Macroeconomics and Financial Crises rethinks how technological change, credit booms, and endogenous information production combine to generate financial crises as inherent and recurrent reactions to macroeconomic dynamics. Gary Gorton and Guillermo Ordoñez identify short-term debt, collateral, and information as common elements that are present in all financial crises. Short-term debt is a critical element for storing value over short periods without fear of loss, but there needs to be collateral backing the debt. Critically, the collateral should be such that no agent wants to produce information about its quality. The debt backed by such collateral is information-insensitive. Gorton and Ordoñez argue that, during a credit boom, as more and more firms get loans, the economy reaches a tipping point where information production becomes too tempting, disrupting short-term debt and cutting most firms out of the credit market. Showing how a financial crisis is an information event triggered by the dynamics of macroeconomic variables, Macroeconomics and Financial Crises provides new perspectives on the intricate relations between macroeconomics and financial crises.

This book explores the effect of liquidity on asset prices, liquidity variations over time and how liquidity risk affects prices.

This book deals with the structural origins of economic and financial crises. It explains that both economic theories and policies need to be grounded on a monetary macroeconomic analysis of the working of domestic and international economies. The volume outlines reform proposals to make sure that banking activities respect the nature of money.