Essays on the credit channel of monetary policy: a case study for Brazil

The onset of the financial crisis in 2008 and the European sovereign crisis in 2010 renewed the interest of macroeconomists on the role played by credit in business cycle fluctuations. The purpose of the present work is to present empirical evidence on the monetary policy transmission mechanism in Brazil with a special eye on the role played by the credit channel, using different econometric techniques. It is comprised by three articles. The first one presents a review of the literature of financial frictions, with a focus on the overlaps between credit activity and the monetary policy. It highlights how the sharp disruptions in the financial markets spurred central banks in developed and emerging nations to deploy of a broad set of non conventional tools to overcome the damage on financial intermediation. A chapter is dedicated to the challenge face by the policymaking in emerging markets and Brazil in particular in the highly integrated global capital market. This second article investigates the implications of the credit channel of the monetary policy transmission mechanism in the case of Brazil, using a structural FAVAR (SFAVAR) approach. The term “structural” comes from the estimation strategy, which generates factors that have a clear economic interpretation. The results show that unexpected shocks in the proxies for the external finance premium and the credit volume produce large and persistent fluctuations in inflation and economic activity – accounting for more than 30% of the error forecast variance of the latter in a three-year horizon. Counterfactual simulations demonstrate that the credit channel amplified the economic contraction in Brazil during the acute phase of the global financial crisis in the last quarter of 2008, thus gave an important impulse to the recovery period that followed. In the third articles, I make use of Bayesian estimation of a classical neo-Keynesian DSGE model, incorporating the financial accelerator channel developed by Bernanke, Gertler and Gilchrist (1999). The results present evidences in line to those already seen in the previous article: disturbances on the external finance premium – represented here by credit spreads – trigger significant responses on the aggregate demand and inflation and monetary policy shocks are amplified by the financial accelerator mechanism. Keywords: Macroeconomics, Monetary Policy, Credit Channel, Financial Accelerator, FAVAR, DSGE, Bayesian Econometrics

The effect of financiaI repression & enforcernent on entrepreneurship and economic deveIopment

This paper studies the effect of financiaI repression and contract enforcement on entrepreneurship and economic development. We construct and solve a general equilibrium mo deI with heterogeneous agents, occupational choice and two financiaI frictions: intermediation costs and financiaI contract enforcement. Occupational choice and firm size are determined endogenously, and depend on agent type (wealth and ability) and the credit market frictions. The mo deI shows that differences across countries in intermediation costs and enforcement generate differences in occupational choice, firm size, credit, output and inequality. Counterfactual experiments are performed for Latin American, European, transition and high growth Asian countries. We use empirical estimates of each country's financiaI frictions, and United States values for all other parameters. The results allow us to isolate the quantitative effect of these financiaI frictions in explaining the performance gap between each country and the United States. The results depend critically on whether à general equilibrium factor price effect is operative, which in turn depends on whether financiaI markets are open or closed. This yields a positive policy prescription: If the goal is to maximize steady-state efficiency, financial reforms should be accompanied by measures to increase financiaI capital mobility.

Can unobserved heterogeneity in farmer ability explain the inverse relationship between farm size and productivity?

The well-known inverse relationship between farm-size and productivity is usually explained in terms of diminishing returns with respect to land and other inputs coupled with various types of market frictions that prevent the efficient allocation of land across farms. We show that even if in the absence of diminishing returns one can provide an alternative explanation for this phenomenon using endogenous occupational choice and heterogeneity with respect to farming skills.

Trust-based trade

There is substantially more trade within national borders than across borders. An important explanation for this fact is the weak enforcement of international contracts. We develop a model in which agents build reputations to overcome this institutional failure. The model describes the interplay between institutional quality, reputations and the dynamics of international trade. It also rationalizes several empirical regularities. We find that history matters for trade volumes, but that its effects vary with the institutional setting of the country. The same is true for the efticacy of trade liberalization programs. Moreover, while stricter enforcement of contracts enhances trade in the short run, it makes it harder for individual traders to develop good reputations. We show that this indirect negative effect may produce an "institutional trap": for sufliciently low initial levels of contract enforcement, a small tightening in enforcement reduces future trade fiows. We find also that search frictions aggravate the problems created by weak enforceability of contracts, even if they impose no direct cost on agents. The model allows extensions in several directions. We outline two of them, indicating how one could study transnational networks and the effects of firm heterogeneity within our structure.

Equilibria in exchange economies with financial constraints : beyond the Cass trick

We consider an exchange economy under incomplete financiaI markets with purely financiaI securities and finitely many agents. When portfolios are not constrained, Cass [4], Duffie [7] and Florenzano-Gourdel [12] proved that arbitrage-free security prices fully characterize equilibrium security prices. This result is based on a trick initiated by Cass [4] in which one unconstrained agent behaves as if he were in complete markets. This approach is unsatisfactory since it is asymmetric and no more valid when every agent is subject to frictions. We propose a new and symmetric approach to prove that arbitrage-free security prices still fully characterize equilibrium security prices in the more realistic situation where the financiaI market is constrained by convex restrictions, provided that financiaI markets are collectively frictionless.

Household borrowing constraints and monetary policy in emerging economies

Credit markets in emerging economies can be distinguished from those in advanced economies in many respects, including the collateral required for households to borrow. This work proposes a DSGE framework to analyze one peculiarity that characterizes the credit markets of some emerging markets: payroll-deducted personal loans. We add the possibility for households to contract long-term debt and compare two different types of credit constraints with one another, one based on housing and the other based on future income. We estimate the model for Brazil using a Bayesian technique. The model is able to solve a puzzle of the Brazilian economy: responses to monetary shocks at first appear to be strong but dissipate quickly. This occurs because income – and the amount available for loans – responds more rapidly to monetary shocks than housing prices. To smooth consumption, agents (borrowers) compensate for lower income and for borrowing by working more hours to repay loans and erase debt in a shorter time. Therefore, in addition to the income and substitution effects, workers consider the effects on their credit constraints when deciding how much labor to supply, which becomes an additional channel through which financial frictions affect the economy.

Demand expectations and the timing of stimulus policies

This paper proposes a simple macroeconomic model with staggered investment decisions. The model captures the dynamic coordination problem arising from demand externalities and fixed costs of investment. In times of low economic activity, a firm faces low demand and hence has less incentives for investing, which reinforces firms’ expectations of low demand. In the unique equilibrium of the model, demand expectations are pinned down by fundamentals and history. Owing to the beliefs that arise in equilibrium, there is no special reason for stimulus at times of low economic activity.

Dynamic coordination among heterogeneous agents

We study a dynamic model of coordination with timing frictions and payoff heterogeneity. There is a unique equilibrium, characterized by thresholds that determine the choices of each type of agent. We characterize equilibrium for the limiting cases of vanishing timing frictions and vanishing shocks to fundamentals. A lot of conformity emerges: despite payoff heterogeneity, agents’ equilibrium thresholds partially coincide as long as there exists a set of beliefs that would make this coincidence possible – though they never fully coincide. In case of vanishing frictions, the economy behaves almost as if all agents were equal to an average type. Conformity is not inefficient. The efficient solution would have agents following others even more often and giving less importance to the fundamental

The risk-incentive trade-off in competitive search

Usando a abordagem de competitive search, modelo um mercado de trabalho com trabalhadores heterogêneos no qual há um problema de risco moral na relação entre firmas e trabalhadores. Nesse contexto, consigo prever como contratos reagem a mudanças nos parâmetros do mercado (em particular, o risco de produção), assim como a variação da probabilidade dos trabalhadores serem contratados. Minha contribuição principal é ver que, no nível individual, existe uma relação negativa entre risco e incentivos, mas efeitos de equilíbrio geral implicam que essa relação pode ser positiva no nível agregado. Esse resultado ajuda a esclarecer resultados empíricos contraditórios sobre a relação entre risco e incentivos.

Capital misallocation and mitigating policies

The purpose of this work is to study the role for government in mitigating capital misallocation. We develop an entrepreneurship model in which heterogeneous producers face collateral constraints on production, but can hedge idiosyncratic shocks. Hedging works as a tool for reallocating resources to states in which they are more productively deployed, and can alleviate the effect of the financial frictions and be a counteracting force to capital misallocation. Government incentives to hedging improve workers’ welfare in steady state through an increase in TFP and wages. The intervention leads to a reduction in the rate of return of entrepreneurs and an increase in wealth dispersion. These two effects cause entrepreneurial welfare to decrease.

On the distributive impact of unconventional monetary policy

Logo após à crise financeira de 2007-08 o Federal Reserve interveio para tentar controlar a recessão. No entanto, ele não apenas baixou os juros, como também adotou políticas não-convencionais, incluindo o empréstimo direto para empresas em mercados de crédito de alto nível. Estas novas medidas foram controversas e alguns opositores protestaram porque elas estariam ajudando disproporcionalmente aquelas pessoas ligadas ao sistema financeiro que já eram ricas. Nós utilizamos um modelo DSGE para a análise de políticas monetária não convencional e introduzimos dois tipos distintos de agentes, capitalistas e trabalhadores, para investigar o seu impacto distributivo. Nós encontramos que a política de crédito to Fed foi bem sucedida no mercado de trabalho, o que ajuda mais os trabalhadores, e introduziu um novo competidor no mercado bancário, o governo, o que prejudica mais os capitalistas. Logo, nós encontramos que a política de crédito diminuiu a desigualdade nos EUA.

Flexible information acquisition and optimal Tobin tax in tractable dynamic global games

My dissertation focuses on dynamic aspects of coordination processes such as reversibility of early actions, option to delay decisions, and learning of the environment from the observation of other people’s actions. This study proposes the use of tractable dynamic global games where players privately and passively learn about their actions’ true payoffs and are able to adjust early investment decisions to the arrival of new information to investigate the consequences of the presence of liquidity shocks to the performance of a Tobin tax as a policy intended to foster coordination success (chapter 1), and the adequacy of the use of a Tobin tax in order to reduce an economy’s vulnerability to sudden stops (chapter 2). Then, it analyzes players’ incentive to acquire costly information in a sequential decision setting (chapter 3). In chapter 1, a continuum of foreign agents decide whether to enter or not in an investment project. A fraction λ of them are hit by liquidity restrictions in a second period and are forced to withdraw early investment or precluded from investing in the interim period, depending on the actions they chose in the first period. Players not affected by the liquidity shock are able to revise early decisions. Coordination success is increasing in the aggregate investment and decreasing in the aggregate volume of capital exit. Without liquidity shocks, aggregate investment is (in a pivotal contingency) invariant to frictions like a tax on short term capitals. In this case, a Tobin tax always increases success incidence. In the presence of liquidity shocks, this invariance result no longer holds in equilibrium. A Tobin tax becomes harmful to aggregate investment, which may reduces success incidence if the economy does not benefit enough from avoiding capital reversals. It is shown that the Tobin tax that maximizes the ex-ante probability of successfully coordinated investment is decreasing in the liquidity shock. Chapter 2 studies the effects of a Tobin tax in the same setting of the global game model proposed in chapter 1, with the exception that the liquidity shock is considered stochastic, i.e, there is also aggregate uncertainty about the extension of the liquidity restrictions. It identifies conditions under which, in the unique equilibrium of the model with low probability of liquidity shocks but large dry-ups, a Tobin tax is welfare improving, helping agents to coordinate on the good outcome. The model provides a rationale for a Tobin tax on economies that are prone to sudden stops. The optimal Tobin tax tends to be larger when capital reversals are more harmful and when the fraction of agents hit by liquidity shocks is smaller. Chapter 3 focuses on information acquisition in a sequential decision game with payoff complementar- ity and information externality. When information is cheap relatively to players’ incentive to coordinate actions, only the first player chooses to process information; the second player learns about the true payoff distribution from the observation of the first player’s decision and follows her action. Miscoordination requires that both players privately precess information, which tends to happen when it is expensive and the prior knowledge about the distribution of the payoffs has a large variance.

Caminho possível para o desenvolvimento do RN: a utopia do Polo Gás Sal

La présente étude sur la modernisation économique qui s est opérée dans le Rio Grande do Norte, constitue un débat concernant les tentatives de faire aboutir un projet de développement industriel fondé sur l exploitation des matières premières locales telles que le sel, le calcaire, les eaux mères et le pétrole, entre les années 70 et 90 du XXe siècle. Elle cherche à montrer, à partir de l observation de l action planifiée de l État national et régional, soutenu par le capital international et par les groupes économiques et politiques locaux, comment on a tenté d implanter, dans des conjonctures économiques distinctes, une industrie d intrants de base moyennant la création de deux pôles de développement : le Pólo Químico Industrial (1974) et le Pólo Gás Sal (1996). Elle est centrée sur l analyse des actions orientées vers la concrétisation de ces pôles, et prendra pour objet les politiques de développement émanant de l État national, en particulier celles qui relevaient du II PND et qui visaient, au cours des années 70, à l implantation d une industrie décentralisée dans la région Nordeste ; les règles fixées par le Plano Nacional de Desestatizações, destinées à promouvoir les privatisations des entreprises publiques brésiliennes, lesquelles ont rendu possible la vente d Alcanorte au groupe industriel commandé par Fragoso Pires, et les politiques définies par l État national et régional, rassemblées sous le titre de « guerre fiscale » afin d attirer des capitaux internationaux susceptibles de rendre viable le Pólo Gás Sal. Il y est démontré que l État a coordonné un ensemble d actions dans les domaines de l infrastructure et des exonérations fiscales et financières, dans le but d accélérer la transition d une économie primaire et exportatrice vers une économie moderne, industrialisée. Et que le concours simultané de forces économiques et sociales particulièrement expressives le capital national et international, les élites locales n a pas suffi pour promouvoir la modernisation industrielle escomptée des secteurs chimique et pétrochimique. Parmi les différentes raisons qui ont contribué à un tel échec, on peut mentionner : l absence d une accumulation interne préalable de capital ; la dépendance de l économie locale par rapport à la technologie et au capital des groupes économiques internationaux ; l inconsistance des stratégies de développement relevant de la politique qui caractérisait la « guerre fiscale », et la fragilité de la représentation politique locale

O Fundef e o Fundeb como política de financiamento para a valorização do magistério: efeitos na carreira e na remuneração dos professores da rede pública estadual de ensino do RN

Le présent étude analyse les effets de la politique de financement de l éducation de base, par les Fonds contables, Fundef et Fundeb, et sa proposition de valorisation de l enseignement, en considerant les dimensions de la carrière et de la rémunération des professeurs de l éducation publique de l état du Rio Grande do Norte, entre les années de 1996 et 2000. Pour comprendre les contraintes de l évaluation des politiques publiques, en cherchant aussi les contribution en Marx (1996) selon qui « le concret est concret » et que la dialétique du concret peut appuyer pour la tentative de capter le fenomène étudié. On a utilisé encore le référentiel bibliographique relatif au financement de l éducation et la valorisation de l enseignement à partir de la littérature reférente aux dimensions de l objet (Fundef et Fundeb) et (carrière et rémuneration). Dans la recherche documental, au-delà des législations, directrices nationales et locales pertinentes, se sont utilisés des donnés référents aux ressources, disponibles à la Finbra, Trésor National, SIOPE/RN, INEP/MEC, des informations du résumé de la feuille et feuille de payement du Secrétariat d État, de l Éducation et de la Culture (SEEC) et 289 bulletins de salaire de 21 professeurs. On a réalisé interview semi structurée avec une quantité de 9 professeurs, reférent à la carrière, et un questionaire appliqué à 12 professeurs relatif à la remuneration. On considère que sur les résultats reférents aux indicateurs éducationnel, dans la période Fundef il y a eu une réduction des inscriptions aux écoles de l état comme aussi aux fonctions des professeurs de l Enseignement Fondamental, et cela correspond à 37%. À partir de la vigence du Fondebe (2007 - 2010) ces indicateurs ont équalisé. Pendant toute la période, 1996 et 2010 il y a eu une augmentation des inscriptions de 119,03%, et aussi aux fonctions des professeurs de 77,44%. Par rapport aux informations de financement, on a constaté que, du minimum exigé (60%) sur l aplication des fonds à la rémuneration de l enseignant, on applique pour la période des deux fonds, plus que le minimum exigé, c est-à-dire de 83,29% à 98,89% des fonds. Les effets des fonds sur la carrière des 9 professeurs n ont pas été satisfactoires, si l on considère la promotion et la progression. Au cas de la promotion des 9 de ces professeurs, un seul a évolué son niveau (les titres) mais a, au même temps, rétroagit dans sa progression. Pour la progression des 9 professeurs, 8 d entre eux ont sa progression retardée, ce qui correspond à entre 2 et 5 classes, et ce qui provoque un préjudice qui varie entre 10% à 45% sur sa remunération. La différence d une classe à l autre correspond à 5% de son salaire. On évalue que les avantages financières contribuent pour la remunération avec un pourcentage plus élevé que son salaire, ce qui diminuent pendant lo Fundeb. Par rapport à la remunération un professeur de 24 ans de service avec formation, n arrive même pas à gagner 2 salaires minimums. Le professeur de 30 ans de service, maître, reçoit un salaire, en 2010, qui correspond a moins de 3 salaires minimums, c est-à-dire, une proportion de 2,82 et une remuneration qui correspond à un peu plus que 3 salaires minimums, c est-à-dire, une proportion de 3,66. L enseignement n est pas très favorisé si on le met face à d autres profession qui ont aussi l exigence de formation supérieure, ce qui provoque un effet négatif pour voir l enseignement comme profession. À propos des effets sur la rémuneration, on conclue qu il y a eu une amélioration mais encore insufisante, surtout si l on compare au Salaire Minimum annuel. On évalue que les fonds Fundef et Fundeb n ont pas été capables de promouvoir la valorisation de l enseignement dans le contexte de carrière et rémuneration. On observe quelques résultats négatif dans la politique de fonds, une fois qu il y aurait en avoir avec l incapacité de tel politique en promouvoir la dite valorisation de l enseignement, ce qui est une des causes, le financement avec des restriction budgétaire

Friction factors, convective heat transfer coefficients and the Colburn analogy for industrial sugarcane juices

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)