We develop a model of leverage that is amenable to laboratory implementation and gather experimental data. We compare two economies that only differ in one dimension: in one economy, agents cannot borrow; in the other, they can leverage a risky asset to issue debt. Leverage increases asset prices in the laboratory. This increase is significant and quanti- tatively close to what theory predicts. Moreover, also as theory suggests, leverage allows gains from trade to be realized in the laboratory. Finally, the mechanism generating the price increase in the lab is due to the asset role as collateral, and different from what we would observe with a simple credit line or bigger cash endowments.

We test the asset pricing implications of collateralized borrowing (that is, of using assets as collateral to borrow money) in the laboratory. To this purpose, we develop a general equilibrium model with collateral constraints amenable to laboratory implementation and gather experimental data. In the laboratory, assets that can be leveraged fetch higher prices than assets that cannot, even though assets’ payoffs are identical in all states of the world. Collateral value, therefore, creates deviations from the Law of One Price. The spread between collateralizeable and non collateralizeable assets is significant and quantitatively close to theoretical predictions. Keywords: Collateral Constraints, Law of One Price, Asset Pricing, Collateral Value, Experimental Economics, Leverage. JEL Codes: A10, C90, G12.

The recent Eurozone debt crisis has witnessed sharp decouplings in cross-country bond yields without commensurate shifts in relative fundamentals. We rationalize this phenomenon in a model wherein countries with different fundamentals are on different equilibrium paths all along, but which become discernible only during bad times. Key ingredients are cross-country differences in the volatility and persistence of fiscal revenue shocks combined with their unobservability by investors. Differences in the cyclicality of fiscal revenues affect the option value of borrowing and resulting default risk; unobservability of fiscal shocks makes bond pricing responsive to market actions. When tax revenues are hit by common positive shocks, no country increases net debt and interest spreads stay put. When a common negative revenue shock hits and is persistent, low volatility countries with higher default costs adjust spending while others resort to borrowing. This difference signals a relative deterioration of fiscal outlooks, interest spreads jump and decoupling takes place. Key words: Eurozone Debt Crisis, Sovereign Debt, Default, Fiscal Gaps, Persistence, Volatility, Information Asymmetry, Perfect Bayesian Equilibrium. JEL codes: E62, F34, G15, H3

Financial innovations that change how promises are collateralized affect prices and investment, even in the absence of any change in fundamentals. In C-models, the ability to leverage an asset always generates overinvestment compared to Arrow-Debreu. Credit Default Swaps always leads to underinvestment with respect to Arrow-Debreu, and in some cases even robustly destroy competitive equilibrium. The need for collateral would seem to cause underinvestment. Our analysis illustrates a countervailing force: goods that serve as collateral yield additional services and can therefore be over-valued and over-produced. In models without cash flow problems there is never marginal underinvestment on collateral.

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 default. Thus actual default is irrelevant, though the potential for default drives the equilibrium and limits borrowing. This result is valid with arbitrary preferences and endowments, contingent or noncontingent promises, many assets and consumption goods, production, and multiple periods. We also show that only no-default equilibria would be selected if there were the slightest cost of using collateral or handling default. Our Binomial Leverage Theorem shows that equilibrium Loan to Value (LTV) for noncontingent debt contracts is the ratio of the worst-case return of the asset to the riskless gross rate of interest. In binomial economies, leverage is determined by down risk and not by volatility.

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 dynamic feedback properties of leverage, volatility, and asset prices, in what we call the leverage cycle, and show how it differs from a credit cycle. We also describe some cross-sectional implications of multiple leverage cycles, including contagion, flight to collateral, and swings in the issuance volume of the highest quality debt.

We show how the timing of financial innovation might have contributed to the mortgage bubble and then to the crash of 2007–2009. We show why tranching and leverage first raised asset prices and why CDS lowered them afterward. This may seem puzzling, since it implies that creating a derivative tranche in the securitization whose payoffs are identical to the CDS will raise the underlying asset price, while the CDS outside the securitization lowers it. The resolution of the puzzle is that the CDS lowers the value of the underlying asset since it is equivalent to tranching cash.

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 why bad news is more often than not associated with higher future volatility. We show that, in a model with endogenous leverage and heterogeneous beliefs, agents have the incentive to invest mostly in technologies that become more volatile in bad times. Agents choose these technologies because they can be leveraged more during normal times. Together with the existing literature this explains pro-cyclical leverage. The result also gives a rationale to the pattern of volatility smiles observed in stock options since 1987. Finally, the paper presents for the first time a dynamic model in which an asset is endogenously traded simultaneously at different margin requirements in equilibrium.

We show how vicious circles in countries' credit histories arise in a model where output persistence is coupled with asymmetric information about output shocks. In such an environment, default signals the borrower's vulnerability to adverse shocks and creates a pessimistic growth outlook. This translates into higher interest spreads and debt servicing costs relative to income, raising the cost of future repayments, thereby creating “default traps”. We build a long and broad cross-country dataset to show the existence of a history-dependent “default premium” and of significant effects of output persistence on sovereign creditworthiness, consistent with the model's predictions.

We provide a pricing theory for emerging asset classes, like emerging markets, that are not yet mature enough to be attractive to the general public. We show how leverage cycles can cause contagion, flight to collateral, and issuance rationing in a frequently recurring phase we call the anxious economy. Our model provides an explanation for the volatile access of emerging economies to international financial markets, and for three stylized facts we identify in emerging markets and high yield data since the late 1990s. Our analytical framework is a general equilibrium model with heterogeneous agents, incomplete markets, and endogenous collateral, plus an extension encompassing adverse selection.

We show that very little is needed to create liquidity under-supply in equilibrium. Credit constraints on demand by themselves can cause an under-supply of liquidity, without the uncertainty, intermediation, asymmetric information or complicated international financial framework used in other models in the literature. We show that the under-supply is a non-monotone function of the demand distortion that causes it, a result that may have interesting implications for emerging markets economies. Finally, when we make the credit constraint endogenous, the inefficiency can be large due to the presence of a multiplier.

This paper examines Latin America’s access to international capital markets from 1980 to 2005, with particular attention to the role of domestic and external factors. To capture access to international markets, we use primary gross issuance in international bond, equity, and syndicated-loan markets. Using panel estimation, we find that sound fundamentals matter. For example, Argentina, Brazil, and Chile’s superb performance in capital markets during the early 1990s has been in large part driven by better fundamentals. However, the upsurge in international lending to Latin America starting in 2003 has been mainly driven by a dramatic increase in global liquidity.

We provide two new, simple proofs of Afriat's celebrated theorem stating that a finite set of price-quantity observations is consistent with utility maximization if, and only, if, the observations satisfy a variation of the Strong Axiom of Revealed Preference known as the Generalized Axiom of Revealed Preference.