Working papers results

2013 - n° 481 11/06/2013
This paper employs a recent statistical algorithm (CRAGGING) in order to build an early warning model for banking crises in emerging markets. We perturb our data set many times and create "artificial" samples from which we estimated our model, so that, by construction, it is flexible enough to be applied to new data for out-of-sample prediction. We find that, out of a large number (540) of candidate explanatory variables, from macroeconomic to balance sheet indicators of the countries' financial sector, we can accurately predict banking crises by just a handful of variables. Using data over the period from 1980 to 2010, the model identifies two basic types of banking crises in emerging markets: a "Latin American type", resulting from the combination of a (past) credit boom, a flight from domestic assets, and high levels of interest rates on deposits; and an "Asian type", which is characterized by an investment boom financed by banks' foreign debt. We compare our model to other models obtained using more traditional techniques, a Stepwise Logit, a Classification Tree, and an "Average" model, and we find that our model strongly dominates the others in terms of out-of-sample predictive power.

Paolo Manasse, Roberto Savona, Marika Vezzoli
Keywords: Banking Crises, Early Warnings, Regression and Classification Trees, Stepwise Logit
2013 - n° 480 17/05/2013
In the theory of psychological games it is assumed that players' preferences on material consequences depend on endogenous beliefs. Most of the applications of this theoretical framework assume that the psychological utility functions representing such preferences are common knowledge. But this is often unrealistic. In particular, it cannot be true in experimental games where players are subjects drawn at random from a population. Therefore an incomplete-information methodology is called for. We take a first step in this direction, focusing on models of guilt aversion in the Trust Game. We consider two alternative modeling assumptions: (i) guilt aversion depends on the role played in the game, because only the 'trustee' can feel guilt for letting the co-player down, (ii) guilt aversion is independent of the role played in the game. We show how the set of Bayesian equilibria changes as the upper bound on guilt sensitivity varies, and we compare this with the complete-information case. Our analysis illustrates the incomplete-information approach to psychological games and can help organize experimental results in the Trust Game.

Giuseppe Attanasi, Pierpaolo Battigalli and Elena Manzoni
Keywords: Psychological games, Trust Game, guilt, incomplete information
2013 - n° 479 15/05/2013
Using personal data collected on the internet, firms and political campaigners are able to tailor their communication to the preferences and orientations of individual consumers and voters, a practice known as hypertargeting. This paper models hypertargeting as selective disclosure of information to an audience with limited attention. We characterize the private incentives and the welfare impact of hypertargeting depending on the wariness of the audience, on the intensity of competition, and on the feasibility of price discrimination. We show that policy intervention that bans the collection of personally identifiable data (for example, through stricter privacy laws requiring user consent) is beneficial when consumers are naive, competition is limited, and firms are able to price discriminate. Otherwise, privacy regulation often backfires.

Florian Hoffmann, Roman Inderst and Marco Ottaviani
Keywords: Hypertargeting, selective disclosure, limited attention, consumer privacy regulation, personalized pricing, competition
2013 - n° 478 09/05/2013
Fiscal consolidations achieved by means of spending cuts are much less costly in terms of output losses than tax-based ones. The difference cannot be explained by accompanying policies, including monetary policy, and it is mainly due to the different response of business confidence and private investment. We obtain these results by studying the effects of the adoption of fiscal consolidation plans (rather than isolated shocks), that is combinations of tax increases and spending cuts, some unanticipated, other anticipated, in a sample of 16 OECD economies.

Alberto Alesina, Carlo Favero and Francesco Giavazzi
Keywords: fiscal adjustment, output, confidence, investment
2013 - n° 477 02/05/2013
In a model with bankruptcy costs and segmented deposit and equity markets, we endogenize the choice of bank and firm capital structure and the cost of equity and deposit finance. Despite risk neutrality, equity capital is more costly than deposits. When banks directly finance risky investments, they hold positive capital and diversify. When they make risky loans to firms, banks trade off the high cost of equity with the diversification benefits from a lower bankruptcy probability. When bankruptcy costs are high, banks use no capital and only lend to one sector. When these are low, banks hold capital and diversify.

Franklin Allen, Elena Carletti
Keywords: Deposit finance, bankruptcy costs, bank diversification
2013 - n° 476 10/04/2013
This paper is structured in three parts. The first part outlines the methodological steps, involving both theoretical and empirical work, for assessing whether an observed allocation of esources across countries is efficient. The second part applies the methodology to the long-run allocation of capital and consumption in a large cross section of countries. We find that countries that grow faster in the long run also tend to save more both domestically and internationally. These facts suggest that either the long-run allocation of resources across countries is inefficient, or that there is a systematic relation between fast growth and preference for delayed consumption. The third part applies the methodology to the allocation of resources across developed countries at the business cycle frequency. Here we discuss how evidence on international quantity comovement, exchange rates, asset prices, and international portfolio holdings can be used to assess efficiency. Overall, quantities and portfolios appear consistent with efficiency, while evidence from prices is difficult to interpret using standard models. The welfare costs associated with an inefficient allocation of resources over the business cycle can be significant if shocks to relative country permanent income are large. In those cases partial financial liberalization can lower welfare.

Jonathan Heathcote, Fabrizio Perri
Keywords: International risk sharing, Long-run risk, Long-run growth, International business cycles, Real exchange rate
2013 - n° 475 12/03/2013
This paper characterizes when joint financing of two projects through debt increases expected default costs, contrary to conventional wisdom. Separate financing dominates joint financing when risk-contamination losses (associated to the contagious default of a well-performing project that is dragged down by a poorly-performing project) outweigh standard coinsurance gains. Separate financing becomes more attractive than joint financing when the fraction of returns lost under default increases and when projects have lower mean returns, higher variability, more positive correlation, and more negative skewness. These predictions are broadly consistent with existing evidence on conglomerate mergers, spin-offs, project finance, and securitization.

Albert Banal-Estañol, Marco Ottaviani, Andrew Winton
Keywords: Default costs, conglomeration, mergers, spin-offs, project finance, risk contamination, coinsurance
2013 - n° 474 28/02/2013
This paper formulates a general theory of how political unrest influences public policy. Political unrest is motivated by emotions. Individuals engage in protests if they are aggrieved and feel that they have been treated unfairly. This reaction is predictable because individuals have a con sistent view of what is fair. This framework yields novel insights about the sources of political influence of different groups in society. Even if the government is benevolent and all groups have access to the same technology for political participation, equilibrium policy can be distorted. Individuals form their view of what is fair taking into account the current state of the world. If fewer aggregate resources are available, individuals accept a lower level of welfare. This resignation effect in turn induces a benevolent government to procrastinate unpleasant policy choices.
Francesco Passarelli and Guido Tabellini
2013 - n° 473 30/01/2013
This paper tests the broadly adopted assumption that people apply a single discount rate to the utility from different sources of consumption. Using unique data from two surveys conducted in rural Uganda including both hypothetical and real choices over different goods, the paper elicits time preferences from approximately 2,400 subjects. The data reject the null of equal discount rates across goods under a number of different modeling assumptions. These results have important theoretical and policy implications. For instance, they provide support for the idea that time-inconsistent behaviors and a corresponding demand for commitment can be observed even if individuals do not exhibit horizon-specific discounting. In addition, good-specific discounting, under certain conditions, can explain the persistence of poverty and low savings by the poor. The paper presents evidence that these conditions are satisfied in the context under study by showing that the share of expenditures on those goods with higher discount rates is decreasing with income.

Diego Ubfal
Keywords: time preferences, self-control problems, good-specific discounting, savings, poverty traps
2013 - n° 472 30/01/2013
In one-good international macro models with nondiversifiable labor income risk, country portfolios are heavily biased toward foreign assets. The fact that the opposite pattern of diversification is observed empirically constitutes the international diversification puzzle. This paper embeds a portfolio choice decision in a two-country, two-good version of the stochastic growth model. In this environment, which is a workhorse for international business cycle research, equilibrium country portfolios can be characterized in closed form. Portfolios are biased toward domestic assets, as in the data. Home bias arises because endogenous international relative price
uctuations make domestic assets a good hedge against labor income risk. Evidence from developed economies in recent years is qualitatively and quantitatively consistent with the mechanisms highlighted by the theory.

Jonathan Heathcote, Fabrizio Perri
Keywords: Country portfolios, International business cycles, Home bias