Collateral Crises

S-Tier
Journal: American Economic Review
Year: 2014
Volume: 104
Issue: 2
Pages: 343-78

Authors (2)

Gary Gorton (not in RePEc) Guillermo Ordo?ez (not in RePEc)

Score contribution per author:

4.022 = (α=2.01 / 2 authors) × 4.0x S-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

Short-term collateralized debt, private money, is efficient if agents are willing to lend without producing costly information about the collateral backing the debt. When the economy relies on such informationally insensitive debt, firms with low quality collateral can borrow, generating a credit boom and an increase in output. Financial fragility is endogenous; it builds up over time as information about counterparties decays. A crisis occurs when a (possibly small) shock causes agents to suddenly have incentives to produce information, leading to a decline in output. A social planner would produce more information than private agents but would not always want to eliminate fragility.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:aea:aecrev:v:104:y:2014:i:2:p:343-78
Journal Field
General
Author Count
2
Added to Database
2026-01-26