The Information View of Financial Crises

40 Pages Posted: 23 Jul 2019 Last revised: 31 Mar 2023

See all articles by Tri Vi Dang

Tri Vi Dang

Columbia University - Department of Economics

Gary B. Gorton

Yale School of Management; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); Yale University - Yale Program on Financial Stability

Bengt R. Holmström

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Department of Economics; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI)

Multiple version iconThere are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: July 2019

Abstract

Short-term debt that can serve as a medium of exchange is designed to be information insensitive. No one should be tempted to acquire private information to gain an informational advantage in trading that could destabilize the value of the debt. Short-term debt minimizes the incentive to acquire information among all securities of equal value backed by the same underlying asset. These features align with observed practice in money markets (markets for short-term debt). They are also consistent with financial crises occurring periodically. In the information view adopted here, financial crisis can occur when the collateral backing the short-term debt is thought to have lost enough value to raise doubts among the traders that some may acquire private information. The purpose of this paper is to review some of the burgeoning empirical literature that bears on the information view sketched above. We focus on evidence related to three key implications of information insensitive debt: (i) adjustments to external shocks will occur along non-price dimensions (less debt issued, higher haircuts, added collateral, etc); (ii) in a crisis some of the short-term debt turns information sensitive; (iii) money markets feature low transparency as well as purposeful opacity.

Suggested Citation

Dang, Tri Vi and Gorton, Gary B. and Holmström, Bengt R., The Information View of Financial Crises (July 2019). NBER Working Paper No. w26074, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3423787

Tri Vi Dang (Contact Author)

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Gary B. Gorton

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Yale University - Yale Program on Financial Stability

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Bengt R. Holmström

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Department of Economics ( email )

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European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI)

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