The economics of credit markets: theory and evidence

Abstract

Doutoramento em Economia. ; Recent years have witnessed an increasing interest in credit markets for a number of reasons: first, credit markets perform important functions in any developed monetary economy, such as the sharing of risk between different individuals, the allocation of financial resources and the transmission of monetary policies; second. several influential theoretical studies have, by taking into consideration the idea of incomplete information, concluded that they operate in a very distinct way compared to most other markets, with equilibria in most cases exhibiting inefficiency; third, the new empirical research has provided support for the importance of the role played by the financial system in the determination of the real economic activity. This thesis examines the relevant works on credit, evaluates the explanatory power of the theories hitherto advanced and, more importantly, offers new theoretical and empirical studies which provide further insights into the subject. Part 1 is devoted to the microeconomic studies on credit with incomplete information. Assuming that borrowers are better informed than lenders about the quality of their investment projects, it derives several theoretical propositions which add to the understanding of credit market functioning. Moreover, it provides empirical evidence on the characteristics of random distributions of rates of return associated with industrial corporations. Part 2 is concerned with macroeconomic studies on credit in the context of the conventional ad-hoc approach with symmetric information. It shows how an explicit credit market may be incorporated in a standard macroeconomic model augmented with wealth effects and government budget constraint in order to allow the examination of issues, such as credit market shocks, that would not otherwise be possible. The thesis' mode of exposition is eclectic, using alternatively 'literary' reasoning, geometrical demonstrations and analytical proofs depending on the nature of the topics under consideration.