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I study economies where banks do not fully internalize the social costs of default, which distorts their lending decisions. In all these economies, a common general equilibrium effect leads to aggregate over-investment. As a result, under laissez-faire, crises are too frequent and too costly from a social point of view. In response, the regulator sets a capital requirement to trade off expected output against financial stability. The capital requirement that ensures investment efficiency depends on the state of the economy. Because of the general equilibrium effect, the more aggregate banking capital the tighter the optimal requirement. A regulation that fails to take this effect into account exacerbates economic fluctuations and allows for excessive build-up of risk in the financial sector during booms. Government guarantees amplify this mechanism and, at the peak of a boom, even a small adverse shock can trigger a banking sector collapse, followed by an excessively severe credit crunch.

We show that political booms, measured by the rise in governments’ popularity, predict financial crises above and beyond other better-known early warning indicators, such as credit booms. This predictive power, however, only holds in emerging economies. We show that governments in emerging economies are more concerned about their reputation and tend to ride the short-term popularity benefits of weak credit booms rather than implementing politically costly corrective policies that would help prevent potential crises. We provide evidence of the relevance of this reputation mechanism.

We use a quantitative equilibrium model with houses, collateralized debt, and foreign borrowing to study the impact of global imbalances on the U.S. economy in the 2000s. Our results suggest that the dynamics of foreign capital flows account for between one-fourth and one-third of the increase in U.S. house prices and household debt that preceded the financial crisis. The key to these findings is that the model generates the sustained low level of interest rates observed over that period.

We use a quantitative equilibrium model with houses, collateralized debt and foreign borrowing to study the impact of global imbalances on the U.S. economy in the 2000s. Our results suggest that the dynamics of foreign capital flows account for between one fourth and one third of the increase in U.S. house prices and household debt that preceded the financial crisis. The key to these findings is that the model generates the sustained low level of interest rates observed over that period.

On 15th November 2012 in Copenhagen, SUERF and Nykredit in association with Danmarks Nationalbank organised a conference on “Property prices and real estate financing in a turbulent world.” The papers included in this SUERF Study are based on contributions to the conference.

The current commodity price boom in combination with high price volatility is historically unprecedented even in the volatile price history of commodities. Commodity price dynamics have crucial macroeconomic and development implications, in particular for commoditydependent low-income countries. Commodity prices are determined by fundamental supply and demand conditions which have experienced important structural changes in the last decade related to increasing demand from highly growing emerging countries, alternative uses of commodities for energy production, and a reduction in supply due to supply constraints and low productivity. However, these factors alone are not sufficient to explain recent commodity price developments, particularly the large fluctuations between 2008 and 2011. Simultaneously to fundamental changes, trading activities on commodity derivative markets have undergone a major shift related to the increasing presence of financial investors, including banks, institutional investors and hedge funds, that has had effects on the microstructure of these markets and on price dynamics. This paper discusses these changes with regard to fundamental factors and commodity derivative markets and assesses their impact on commodity prices. Further, the paper identifies implications of these developments for developing countries and policy reforms with the objective to stabilize commodity prices and mitigate the negative impacts of the commodity price boom on developing countries.

To promote the financial stability, there is a need for an early warning system to signal the formation of asset price misalignments. This research provides two novel methods to accomplish this task. Results in this research shows that the conventional unit root tests in modified forms can be used to construct early warning indicators for bubbles in financial markets. More precisely, the conventional augmented Dickey-Fuller unit root test is shown to provide a basis for two novel bubble indicators. These new indicators are tested via MC simulations to analyze their ability to signal emerging unit roots in time series and to compare their power with standard stability and unit root tests. Simulation results concerning these two new stability tests are promising: they seem to be more robust and to have more power in the presence of changing persistence than the standard stability and unit root tests. When these new tests are applied to real US stock market data starting from 1871, they are able to signal most of the consensus bubbles, defined as stock market booms for example by the IMF, and they also flash warning signals far ahead of a crash. Also encouraging are the results with these methods in practical applications using equity prices in the UK, Finland and China as the methods seem to be able to signal most of the consensus bubbles from the data. Finally, these early warning indicators are applied to data for several housing markets. In most of the cases the indicators seem to work relatively well, indicating bubbles before the periods which, according to the consensus literature, are seen as periods of sizeable upward or downward movements. The scope of application of these early warning indicators could be wide. They could be used eg to help determine the right timing for the start of a monetary tightening cycle or for an increase in countercyclical capital buffers.

In this paper, a model of bounded rational investors investing their portfolio in a passive investment vehicle (e.g., an Exchange Traded Fund replicating a broad index) or an actively managed fund is presented. The model proposes that the quick reswitching of these short-term oriented investors induces momentum behavior in prices. Investors prefer passsive funds in time of low risk-free rates and when active funds charge high management costs. Actively managed funds have a lower volatility but are only able to outperform the passive funds in downturns. Simulations confirm the emergence of two regimes: a regime where prices are close to fundamentals and another regime with a positive bubble. The size and the length of this bubble increases for low market liquidity and high switching speed of investors. The market volatility increases for strong reswitching activities and short-term thinking of bounded rational investors. Negative bubbles (market prices lower than fundamentals) tend to occur if active portfolio managers exhibit high risk aversion, but are less frequent than positive bubbles.

We explore a view of the crisis as a shock to investor sentiment that led to the collapse of a bubble or pyramid scheme in financial markets. We embed this view in a standard model of the financial accelerator and explore its empirical and policy implications. In particular, we show how the model can account for: (i) a gradual and protracted expansionary phase followed by a sudden and sharp recession; (ii) the connection (or lack of connection!) between financial and real economic activity and; (iii) a fast and strong transmission of shocks across countries. We also use the model to explore the role of fiscal policy.

We outline a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model with trend extrapo-lation in asset pricing that we fit to quarterly U.S. macroeconomic time series with Baye-sian techniques. To be more precise, we modify the DSGE model in Smets and Wouters (2007) by incorporating asset traders who use a mix of fundamental analysis and trend extrapolation in asset pricing. We conclude that trend extrapolation in asset pricing is quantitatively relevant, statistically significant and results in a substantial improvement of the model's fit to the data. We also find that the strength in trend extrapolation is much stronger during the Great Moderation than it was prior to this period. Moreover, allowing for asset mispricing leads to more pronounced hump-shaped dynamics of the asset price and investment. Thus, asset price misalignments should be an important in-gredient in DSGE models that aim to understand business cycles dynamics in general and the interaction between the real and financial sectors in particular.

Employing a new accounting data set we apply the framework of McGrattan and Prescott (2005) to the Japanese economy in order to assess if Japanese stocks were priced correctly in the period after 1980. We find that the stock market tended to undervalue the fundamental value of installed capital. We also provide a new interpretation of Japanese stock market phenomena during the 'bubble period' and suggest that from a theoretical perspective, stock prices during the 'bubble period' were correctly valued. Changes in the reproducible cost of intangible capital play an important role in our new interpretation.

This study looks at real estate price booms and busts in industrialised countries. It identifies major and persistent deviations from long term trends for 18 countries and estimates the probabilities of their occurrence using a Random Effects Panel Probit model over the period 1980-2007. It finds that 1) most recent housing booms have been very persistent and of a significant magnitude; 2) there appears to be a strong correlation between the persistence and magnitude of booms and subsequent busts; 3) economic costs (in terms of GDP losses during the post-boom phase) depend significantly on the magnitude and duration of the boom and money and credit developments during that period; 4) a number of policy variables, including short term interest rates, local and global money and credit developments, and the incidence of mortgage market deregulation affect significantly the probability of experiencing booms and busts; and 5) the model is quite successful in identifying booms and busts early on.

Between June 1998 and March 2006, the price index of apartment housing in Seoul, Republic of Korea, more than doubled, while fundamentals such as gross domestic product, wage, and population increased by less than 35%. This study examines the role of a rational speculative bubble in this price surge. We find that unobservable information explains part of the price volatility, and that a rational bubble proxy is a significant driver of prices. However, neither latent information nor rational bubble is enough to explain the recent housing price appreciation, even in conjunction with observable fundamentals.

The contribution of this paper is to revisit the Early Warning System (EWS) literature by analysing selected episodes of financial market crisis, i.e. those preceded by a spell of credit and real estate expansions. The aim is to disentangle instances when this constitutes a natural phenomenon associated with a process of financial development and innovation from those where it constitutes a worrisome signal. We identify economic variables that have leading indicator properties, thus helping to distinguish between “benign” episodes from those likely ending with downward pressures on the exchange rate or even a fully-fledged banking crisis. We find that a large current account deficit, a fall in price competitiveness, strong real growth and high public debt-to-GDP ratio increase the probability that a lending or housing boom would be accompanied by financial market tensions shortly after the peak.

We test the performance of a host of real and financial variables as early warning indicators for costly aggregate asset price boom/bust cycles, using data for 18 OECD countries between 1970 and 2007. A signalling approach is used to predict asset price booms that have relatively serious real economy consequences. We use a loss function to rank the tested indicators given policy makers' relative preferences with respect to missed crises and false alarms. The paper analyzes the suitability of various indicators as well as the relative performance of financial versus real, global versus domestic and money versus credit based liquidity indicators. We find that global measures of liquidity are among the best performing indicators and display forecasting records, which provide useful information for policy makers interested in timely reactions to growing financial imbalances, as long as aversion against type I and type II errors is not too unbalanced. Furthermore, we explore out-of-sample whether the most recent wave of asset price booms (2005-2007) would be predicted to be followed by a serious economic downturn.

This study identifies five distinctive stages of the current global financial crisis: the meltdown of the subprime mortgage market, spillovers into broader credit market, the liquidity crisis epitomized by the fallout of Northern Rock, Bear Stearns with contagion effects on other financial institutions, the commodity price bubble, and the ultimate demise of investment banking in the U.S. Monetary policy responses aimed at stabilizing financial markets are proposed. The study argues that the severity of the crisis is influenced strongly by changeable allocations of global savings, which lead to over-pricing of varied types of assets. The study calls such process a wandering asset-price bubble”. Unstable allocations have elevated market, credit and liquidity risks. Since its original outbreak induced by the demise of the subprime mortgage market and the mortgage-backed securities in the U.S., the crisis has reverberated across other credit areas, structured financial products and global financial institutions.

This paper examines empirically some of the reasons why Japanese manufacturing firms frequently fail to satisfy concavity conditions of the cost function. We focus on the 'bubble period' in the 1980s when land was in great demand for reasons related to both production and speculation, and land prices soared. By estimating the translog cost function with land as one of production inputs for manufacturing firms, we find that violation of concavity resulted from borrowing constraints and large adjustments of employment. We also demonstrate that elasticities of substitution between land and other inputs and input demand with respect to land rental prices are both estimated with large biases if the firms violating concavity are not excluded from the analysis.

Over the last several years debate over monetary policy has focused on two issues, inflation targeting and asset price bubbles. This paper explores the case for explicitly targeting asset price bubbles, a policy that the Federal Reserve Bank has opposed on the grounds that it is both infeasible and undesirable. The paper argues that the Fed is wrong on both counts. Asset price bubbles are identifiable. Bubbles also do significant economic harm through the debt footprint effects they leave behind and through interest rate blunderbuss effects resulting from attempts to mitigate the aggregate demand impact of bubbles. Managing bubbles calls for additional policy instruments. These can be provided a system of asset based reserve requirements (ABRR).

We provide systematic evidence for the association of liquidity shocks and aggregate asset prices during mechanically identified asset price boom/bust episodes for 18 OECD countries since the 1970s, while taking care of the endogeneity of money and credit. Our derivation of liquidity shocks allows for frequent shifts in velocity as they are derived as structural shocks from VARs in growth rates. Residential property price developments and money growth shocks accumulated over the boom periods are able to well explain the depth of post-boom recessions. We further suggest that liquidity shocks are a driving factor for real estate prices during boom episodes. During normal times however, the relative predictive power of liquidity shocks seems to shift from asset price inflation to consumer price inflation. The results only hold for broad money growth based liquidity shocks and not for private credit growth shocks.

Even though economic models have been relatively successful in explaining the long run patterns of house prices, they have more difficulties in explaining short run developments of the housing markets. However, the fact that during such ‘bubbles’ the spatial pattern of house prices, which can mainly be attributed to accessibility differences, usually remains unchanged, suggests that the irrational forces that are presumably responsible for unexplained movements in house prices obey some regularities: they seem to affect the level of house prices, but not their spatial pattern. This suggests that it is worthwhile to consider the explanatory power of psychological variables like those reflecting general (nation wide) feelings of optimism or pessimism. This paper considers the development of Dutch house prices in the years 1999 and 2000, when house prices increased fast. Existing explanations of the long run development of Dutch house prices on the basis of economic fundamentals (notably income and the mortgage interest rate) would suggest a much more modest development of house prices over these years. We also show that commonly used housing market indicators, notably the number of vacancies (houses for sale) and the time on the market, are unable to explain the development of house prices during this period. However, we find a strong relationship between the development of house prices and the Dutch index of consumer confidence.

In twelve sessions conducted in a typical bubble-generating experimental environment, we design a pair of assets that can detect both irrationality and speculative behavior. The specific form of irrationality we investigate is probability judgment error associated with low-probability, high-payoff outcomes. Independently, we test for speculation by comparing prices of identically paying assets in multiperiod versus single-period markets. When these tests indicate the presence of probability judgment error and speculation, bubbles are more likely to occur. This finding suggests that both factors are important bubble drivers.

Tests for unit roots in log dividend yields, which are consistent with `rational bubbles' in stock prices, are conducted for the S&P500 and Finnish stock market indexes.In addition to the traditional unit root tests, we split the data into 10-year segments and use frequency domain analysis to test for the presence of unit roots in the dividend yield data.The results strongly suggest the existence of bubbles in both the US and Finnish markets.Finally we develop a novel dividend yield-based method to track periods when stock prices divert their fundamental levels. This indicator produces promising results, as it seems to have some forecasting ability concerning booms and busts in the stock markets.

After the burst of the bubble economy, Japanese economy has been changed drastically. Traditionally, Japanese economy was characterized as a bank-centered economy, but the banking system did not function well in the 1990's. Responding to banking problems, the Japanese government initiated the Financial Big Bang in 1996 to strength the capability of capital markets. Also, accounting and disclosure rules have been revised to make more credible and wider information available to market participants. If other things be constant, more extensive and timely disclosure should result in more accurate evaluation of firm's risks. However, there is a lack of research that investigates how effective current disclosure is in evaluating corporate risks. This lack of research is mainly because there are not appropriate data sets and methodology to be used for empirical tests. Fortunately, Morgan (2002) proposed a very useful method. That is, he used the disagreement between credit rating companies (i.e., Moody's and Standard and Poor's) over new issued bonds to measure the difficulty in evaluating firms' risks. In this paper, we follow Morgan (2002) and investigate whether credit rating companies likely agreed on the evaluation on Japanese firms' risks after the financial and accounting Big Bang. If there are still large disagreements among credit rating companies, this fact suggests that the current disclosure is not enough for outsiders to evaluate firms, or that there is an inherent limitation of disclosure usage. Also, we are interested in what sectors credit rating companies more often disagree on. Contrary to Morgan (2002), which pointed out that financial industries, such as banks and insurance companies, are difficult to evaluate, we failed to find that disagreements among credit rating companies over banks and insurance companies are larger than disagreements over other industries. However, consistent with Morgan (2002), we found that public utilities industry is easy to evaluate. This paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we discuss the current Japanese economic situation and explain the accounting and disclosure reform. In Section 3, we explain data and methodology that are used in this paper. In Section 4, empirical results are provided. Section 5 concludes this paper.

This paper gives an overview of some issues related to market valuation, focusing on the developments on the New York equity markets. The 42.4 p.c. fall in the S&P 500 price index between 24 March 2000 - when it reached its all-time high - and 31 December 2002 is situated in a very long term perspective. It then appears that some bear markets were more pronounced in the past but that the bull market preceding the 2000-2002 bear market had been particularly long and impressive in extent. Given this sharp correction, we will discuss whether the S&P 500 was correctly valued at the end of 2002. To this end, we make use of valuation indicators defined as the ratio of the price to a fundamental. The fundamentals considered here are, according to the discount dividend model, annual earnings and, according to Q-theory, net worth. In December 2002, price-earnings (P/E) still showed a significant overvaluation of equity prices when compared to the historical average over the 1871-2002 period but, since July 2002, the overvaluation has not been significant in the case of Q. The evidence is even more mixed when the comparison is made, for each valuation indicator, with their average over the last 10 years. Simulations based on VAR models for P/E and Q were carried out to check whether, on two occasions, the S&P 500 in real terms climbed to a level perceived as irrational given past experience, implying that a correction had to be expected. These occasions were the so-called 1929 and 2000 bubbles. The models showed that, at some point in time before the peak in (real) stock prices was reached, the real S&P 500 exceeded the upper band of the 95 p.c. confidence intervals during both periods. For each of them, the Q model showed earlier and more persistent signals of significant overvaluation of stock prices than for the P/E model. Finally, in December 2002, both models indicated that the stock price had come back largely within the confidence interval.

We investigate experimentally how the share of experienced traders in double-auction asset markets affects trading, in particular the occurrence of bubble-crash pricing patterns. In each session, six subjects trade in three successive market rounds and gain experience. In a fourth round, depending on the treatment, two or four experienced subjects are replaced by inexperienced subjects. The results are compared to earlier findings when all traders were either inexperienced or experienced. We explore what can be learned by analogy between these laboratory findings and the performance of naturally occurring markets.

Background: The traditional economic models are increasingly perceived as weak in explaining the bubbles and crashes in financial markets and the associated crisis. Thus, especially after the global financial crisis in 2008, agent-based model (ABM) is getting an attention as an alternative approach for a better understanding of complex dynamics of financial market. Methods: This paper develops an ABM to replicate financial instability, such as bubbles and crashes in asset markets, by introducing a simple idea of ‘heterogeneous expectation’ and ‘herding behavior’ by which agents in different groups have different expectations about a ‘tipping point’ where they expect the price to stop rising anymore but to begins to fall. Results: It is shown that, when the agents have different expectations on the tipping point, the collapse of the price does not emerge automatically, and price fluctuations are often small and even some (seemingly) flat intervals appear. We also verify the impact of the herding behavior by dividing agents into several groups of varying sizes but with the same expectations. By changing the size of groups, we establish that the more agents share the same expectations about the tipping point, the higher volatility of the asset price emerges. Conclusions: We confirm that bubble and burst of prices are more like to emerge when heterogeneous expectations about prices are combined with herding behavior among agents, so that agents in the same group share the similar expectations about the price changes.