TY  - JOUR
AU  - Caballero,Ricardo
AU  - Krishnamurthy,Arvind
TI  - Financial System Risk and Flight to Quality
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 11834
PY  - 2005
Y2  - December 2005
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11834
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11834.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Ricardo J. Caballero
MIT
Department of Economics
Room E52-373a
Cambridge, MA 02142-1347
Tel: 617/253-0489
Fax: 617/253-6915
E-Mail: caball@mit.edu

Arvind Krishnamurthy
Kellogg School of Management
Northwestern University
2001 Sheridan Road
Evanston, IL 60208
Tel: 847/491-2671
Fax: 847/491-5719
E-Mail: a-krishnamurthy@northwestern.edu
AB  - We present a model of flight to quality episodes that emphasizes financial system risk and the Knightian uncertainty surrounding these episodes. In the model, agents are uncertain about the probability distribution of shocks in markets different from theirs, treating such uncertainty as Knightian. Aversion to this uncertainty generates demand for safe financial claims. It also leads agents to require financial intermediaries to lock-up capital to cover their own markets' shocks in a manner that is robust to uncertainty over other markets. These actions are wasteful in the aggregate and can trigger a financial accelerator. A lender of last resort can unlock private capital markets to stabilize the economy during these episodes by committing to intervene should conditions worsen.
ER  -