A Macroeconomic Model with a Financial Sector∗ Markus K. Brunnermeier and Yuliy Sannikovy February 22, 2011 Abstract This paper studies the full equilibrium dynamics of an economy with financial frictions. Due to highly non-linear amplification effects, the economy is prone to instability and occasionally enters volatile episodes. Risk is endogenous and asset price correlations are high in down turns. In an environment of low exogenous risk experts assume higher leverage making the system more prone to systemic volatility spikes - a volatility paradox. Securitization and derivatives contracts leads to better sharing of exogenous risk but to higher endogenous systemic risk. Financial experts may impose a negative externality on each other by not maintaining adequate capital cushion. ∗We thank Nobu Kiyotaki, Hyun Shin, Thomas Philippon, Ricardo Reis, Guido Lorenzoni, Huberto Ennis, V. V. Chari, Simon Potter, Emmanuel Farhi, Monika Piazzesi, Simon Gilchrist, Ben Moll and seminar participants at Princeton, HKU Theory Conference, FESAMES 2009, Tokyo University, City University of Hong Kong, University of Toulouse, University of Maryland, UPF, UAB, CUFE, Duke, NYU 5-star Conference, Stanford, Berkeley, San Francisco Fed, USC, UCLA, MIT, University of Wis- consin, IMF, Cambridge University, Cowles Foundation, Minneapolis Fed, New York Fed, University of Chicago, the Bank of Portugal Conference, Econometric Society World Congress in Shanghai, Seoul National University, European Central Bank and UT Austin. We also thank Wei Cui, Ji Huang, Dirk Paulsen, Andrei Rachkov and Martin Schmalz for excellent research assistance. yBrunnermeier: Department of Economics, Princeton University,
[email protected], San- nikov: Department of Economics, Princeton University,
[email protected] 1 1 Introduction Many standard macroeconomic models are based on identical households that invest directly without financial intermediaries.