Collateral Expansion: Pricing Spillovers from Financial Innovation

Abstract

Financial innovation is the use of new kinds of collateral or new kinds of promises backed by existing collateral. We study the effect of collateral-based financial innovation in a general equilibrium model with incomplete markets and provide precise predictions about cross-price spillovers. Whereas leverage has positive price spillovers on other markets, tranching and credit default swaps have negative price spillovers on other asset markets. Our results underscore a new mechanism (collateral-based financial innovation) that can explain cross-market spillovers without relying on traditional contagion (portfolio/fire-sale) channels.

Publication
Working Paper