Our paper provides a complete characterization of leverage and default in binomial economies with financial assets serving as collateral. Our Binomial No-Default Theorem states that any equilibrium is equivalent (in real allocations and prices) to another equilibrium in which there is no...

Our paper provides a complete characterization of leverage and default in binomial economies with financial assets serving as collateral. Our Binomial No-Default Theorem states that any equilibrium is equivalent (in real allocations and prices) to another equilibrium in which there is no...

If the historical average annual real interest rate is m 0, and if the world is stationary, should consumption in the distant future be discounted at the rate of m per year? Suppose the annual real interest rate r(t) reverts to m according to the Ornstein Uhlenbeck (OU) continuous time process...

The steady application of Quantitative Easing (QE) has been followed by big and non-monotonic effects on international asset prices and international capital flows. These are difficult to explain in conventional models, but arise naturally in a model with collateral. This paper develops a...

A synthesis of new and old approaches in understanding macroeconomic fluctuations and the role of monetary policy (MP) is the credit surface, where the interest rate is a function of multiple credit terms: leverage, credit rating, term, etc. We gauge credit conditions using the credit surface in...

Irving Fisher long advocated inflation indexed bonds. I prove in the context of a multicommodity CAPM world that the best welfare improving bond pays the minimum money needed to achieve the same utility, and not the minimum needed to buy an ideal commodity bundle. Irving Fisher also developed...

We build a simple model of leveraged asset purchases with margin calls. Investment funds use what is perhaps the most basic financial strategy, called "value investing," i.e., systematically attempting to buy underpriced assets. When funds do not borrow, the price fluctuations of the asset are...

A recent literature shows how an increase in volatility reduces leverage. However, in order to explain pro-cyclical leverage it assumes that bad news increases volatility, that is, it assumes an inverse relationship between first and second moments of asset returns. This paper suggests a reason...

We study endogenous leverage in a general equilibrium model with incomplete markets. We prove that in any binary tree leverage emerges in equilibrium at the maximum level such that VaR=0, so there is no default in equilibrium, provided that agents get no utility from holding the collateral. When...

We review the theory of leverage developed in collateral equilibrium models with incomplete markets. We explain how leverage tends to boost asset prices, and create bubbles. We show how leverage can be endogenously determined in equilibrium, and how it depends on volatility. We describe the...