Weekly Seminars 2016-2017

Seminars for 2016-2017

November 28, 2016
2:00-3:00pm

Yunzhi Hu

Department of Economics and Booth School of Business, University of Chicago

Recovery Dynamics: An Explanation from Bank Screening and Entrepreneur Entry

Abstract
Economic recoveries can be slow, fast, or involve double dips. This paper provides an explanation based on the dynamic interactions between bank lending standards and firm entry selection. Recoveries are slower when high-quality borrowers postpone their investments, which occurs if the borrower pool has lower quality on average. Double dips can occur when banks endogenously produce information, which increases waiting benefits discontinuously. The model is consistent with both aggregate- and industry-level data.

November 28, 2016
3:00-4:00pm

Paymon Khorrami

Department of Economics, University of Chicago

Trends in Productive Technology, Intermediation, and Inequality: A Long-term Macroeconomics Perspective

Abstract
I develop a theory to jointly explain several coincident long-term trends in the United States — increased usage of intangible capital, growth and compositional shifts in the financial sector, and higher income inequality. Active finance intermediates intangible, high-risk capital by monitoring its use, whereas tangible, low-risk capital is intermediated passively. If new firms are more productive but feature less tangible or riskier assets, the model endogenously generates the aforementioned trends. Inequality is a key source of feedback effects in the model: active finance, which relies on contributions from wealthy individuals, becomes more cost-effective as inequality rises. A similar story emerges if technological progress occurs directly in the financial sector (e.g., financial innovation). I discuss several of the model’s auxiliary predictions and their potential to be consistent with the data.