Capital Flows in an Aging World Barany, Zsofia; Coeurdacier, Nicolas; Guibaud, Stéphane
IDEAS Working Paper Series from RePEc,
01/2018
Paper
Odprti dostop
We investigate the importance of worldwide demographic evolutions in shaping capital flows across countries and over time. Our lifecycle model incorporates cross-country differences in fertility and ...longevity as well as differences in countries' ability to borrow inter-temporally and across generations through social security. In this environment, global aging triggers uphill capital flows from emerging to advanced economies, while country-specific demographic evolutions reallocate capital towards countries aging more slowly. Our quantitative multi-country overlapping generations model explains a large fraction of capital flows across advanced and emerging countries and a substantial portion of the prolonged decline in the world interest rate.
We propose a clientele-based model of the yield curve and optimal maturity structure of government debt. Clienteles are generations of agents at different lifecycle stages in an ...overlapping-generations economy. An optimal maturity structure exists in the absence of distortionary taxes and induces efficient intergenerational risksharing. If agents are more risk-averse than log, then an increase in the long-horizon clientele raises the price and optimal supply of long-term bonds - effects that we also confirm empirically in a panel of OECD countries. Moreover, under the optimal maturity structure, catering to clienteles is limited and long-term bonds earn negative expected excess returns.
We study managerial incentive provision under moral hazard in a firm subject to stochastic growth opportunities. In our model, managers are dismissed after poor performance, but also when an ...alternative manager is better able to grow the firm. The optimal contract may involve managerial entrenchment, such that growth opportunities are foregone after good performance. Firms with better growth prospects have higher managerial turnover and more front-loaded compensation. The use of golden parachutes is suboptimal, unless the firm needs to incentivize its managers to truthfully report the arrival of growth opportunities. By ignoring the externality of the dismissal policy onto future managers, the optimal contract may imply excessive retention.
We show that in an open-economy OLG model, the interaction between growth differentials and household credit constraints, more severe in fast-growing countries, can explain three prominent global ...trends: a divergence in private saving rates between advanced and emerging economies, large net capital outflows from the latter, and a sustained decline in the world interest rate. Micro-level evidence on the evolution of age-saving profiles in the U.S. and China corroborates our mechanism. Quantitatively, our model explains about 40 percent of the divergence in aggregate saving rates, and a significant portion of the variations in age-saving profiles across countries and over time
We propose a clientele-based model of the yield curve and optimal maturity structure of government debt. Clienteles are generations of agents at different lifecycle stages in an ...overlapping-generations economy. An optimal maturity structure exists in the absence of distortionary taxes and induces efficient intergenerational risksharing. If agents are more risk-averse than log, then an increase in the long-horizon clientele raises the price and optimal supply of long-term bonds---effects that we also confirm empirically in a panel of OECD countries. Moreover, under the optimal maturity structure, catering to clienteles is limited and long-term bonds earn negative expected excess returns.
In a period of rapid integration and accelerated growth in emerging markets, three striking trends have been (1) a divergence in the private saving rates of emerging markets and advanced economies, ...(2) large net capital outflows from emerging markets, and (3) a sustained decline in the world interest rate. This paper shows that in a multi-period OLG model, the interaction between growth and household credit constraints --- more severe in emerging markets --- is able to account for all of the above facts. We provide micro-level evidence that corroborates our mechanism: saving behaviors across age groups in the U.S. and China are broadly supportive of the predictions of the model.
The goal of this paper is to analyze the determination of countries equity portfolios and countries stock returns behavior in the context of imperfectly integrated financial markets. We build a ...continuous-time equilibrium model of a two-country endowment economy in which the level of financial integration is simply captured by with holding taxes on foreign dividends. Despite the heterogeneity among investors induced by these taxes, we obtain approximate closed-form expressions for asset prices and we characterize equity holdings and national assets returns behavior in equilibrium. The existence of a friction akin to a with holding tax on foreign dividends has two opposite effects on portfolios: the first mechanical effect is to reduce foreign holdings by reducing expected returns on foreign assets; but there is a second effect, which is to reduce endogenously the correlation between national asset returns, thus increasing the willingness to diversify internationally. Quantitatively, we show that the direct effect dwarfs the indirect effect and we find that, for a reasonably high level of substituability between national assets, small frictions on equity markets can generate a large home bias in portfolios. Empirically, our model is consistent with a broad range of findings on international financial integration. Moreover, we provide an explanation for the puzzling positive relationship that has been found in the data between bilateral equity holdings and bilateral stock returns correlations.
Do investors completely ignore the basics of portfolio theory? Given their over-exposure on domestic risk, investors should try to hedge this risk by picking foreign assets that have low correlation ...with their home assets. In the data though, we find a robust positive relationship between bilateral equity holdings and bilateral return correlations. We argue that this finding could be driven by the common impact of financial integration on cross-border equity holdings and on cross-market correlations. Indeed, when we instrument current correlations with past correlations to control for endogeneity, we recover asset demand functions that decrease with returns correlation.
Do investors completely ignore the basics of portfolio theory? Given their over-exposure on domestic risk, investors should try to hedge this risk by picking foreign assets that have low correlation ...with their home assets. In the data though, we find a robust positive relationship between bilateral equity holdings and bilateral return correlations. We argue that this finding could be driven by the common impact of financial integration on cross-border equity holdings and on cross-market correlations. Indeed, when we instrument current correlations with past correlations to control for endogeneity, we recover asset demand functions that decrease with returns correlation.
The goal of this paper is to analyze the determination of countries equity portfolios and countries stock returns behavior in the context of imperfectly integrated financial markets. We build a ...continuous-time equilibrium model of a two-country endowment economy in which the level of financial integration is simply captured by with holding taxes on foreign dividends. Despite the heterogeneity among investors induced by these taxes, we obtain approximate closed-form expressions for asset prices and we characterize equity holdings and national assets returns behavior in equilibrium. The existence of a friction akin to a with holding tax on foreign dividends has two opposite effects on portfolios: the first mechanical effect is to reduce foreign holdings by reducing expected returns on foreign assets; but there is a second effect, which is to reduce endogenously the correlation between national asset returns, thus increasing the willingness to diversify internationally. Quantitatively, we show that the direct effect dwarfs the indirect effect and we find that, for a reasonably high level of substituability between national assets, small frictions on equity markets can generate a large home bias in portfolios. Empirically, our model is consistent with a broad range of findings on international financial integration. Moreover, we provide an explanation for the puzzling positive relationship that has been found in the data between bilateral equity holdings and bilateral stock returns correlations.
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