主题：Safe Assets as Collateral Multipliers

主讲：Shengxing Zhang, London School of Economics

时间：2019年12月25日 10:30-12:00

地点：半岛·体育bob官方网站710会议室

摘要：Risky assets, such as mortgage and bank loans, are often pledged as collateral to overcome the limited commitment problem but their funding capacity is limited due to adverse selection. Public safe assets, such as reserves and treasury bonds, are free of adverse selection and can also be used as collateral, but are costly to produce. We demonstrate a complementarity between the use of safe and risky assets as collaterals. Safe assets facilitate the production of risky assets and increase leverage and act as collateral multipliers. Complementaries arise because safe assets lower adverse selection and coordinate beliefs in selecting the liquid equilibrium. In a dynamic setting, this role also eliminates equilibrium multiplicity and financial fragility. Furthermore asset prices are more sensitive to monetary policy in the dynamic environment. The theory has also implications on the optimal balance sheet (asset-liability) compositions of banks, their role as liquidity producers, excess cash holdings for corporations, and thus for monetary and financial policies.