The use of statutory reserve requirement as a monetary policy tool has arguably diminished in recent years. Moreover, the money multiplier, a fundamental macroeconomic theory, which deals with the relationship between the monetary base, required reserves and the money supply, has been a target for some heavy critique.  The money multiplier theory encompasses a required reserve ratio, excess reserve ratio and currency ratio to explain the changes in the money multiplier. The multiplier, which in itself is the ratio of the broad money and the monetary base, is described as a decreasing function of the ratios. In this paper, we calculate the respective ratios and employ a linear regression model based on the multiplier theory to examine the relationships between the ratios. The effects are estimated individually in USA, Eurozone, Japan and in a panel data analysis combining all three currency areas.   We find that the reserve requirement ratios do not significantly explain the changes in the money multiplier in the USA or in the Eurozone. However, the reserve requirement ratios are found to have a significant effect in Japan and in the pooled data analysis. Further, in all of the cases, except in the Eurozone, the empirical model of the multiplier is found to explain significantly the variation in the multiplier, albeit with poor explanatory power in the pooled model.  The varying explanatory power of the model and the altering significance of the reserve requirements suggests that the multiplier theory does not hold exactly.  This implies that the effectiveness of the reserve requirements as a tool of monetary policy should not be taken as granted in contemporary economies.

My research focuses on the reasons for banking crises and the corresponding policy rules that could help prevent such crises. This abstract briefly reviews the two essays in my dissertation. The first essay focuses on the optimal mechanism design of the deposit insurance system while the second essay studies the impact of international illiquidity on domestic banking crises. The Recent Deposit Insurance Reform in the U.S. raised the coverage limit for certain types of deposits. In chapter II, I study the optimal coverage limit in a model of deposit insurance in the banking system. Because of the coverage limit, depositors have incentives to monitor the bank’s risk-taking behavior, threatening banks with the withdrawal of deposits if necessary. The model includes risk-taking banks, heterogeneous depositors, and a benevolent insurance company providing deposit insurance. I find that partial coverage combined with risk-sensitive premia in the presence of capital requirements can improve social welfare and manage banks’ risktaking behavior. Moreover, when a partial coverage limit is in place, banks are better off by finding a balance between the higher premia and the depositors’ monitoring and withdrawals. Unlike chapter II, chapter III focuses on the role played by international illiquidity. I build a dynamic general equilibrium model (DGEM) of a small, open economy. The features I include in the model are nontrivial demands for fiat currencies, unanticipated sunspots, and financial/banking crises originated by sudden stops of foreign capital inflows are. This chapter gives us a better understanding of the performance of alternative exchange rate regimes and associated monetary policies under a simple setup. I show the existence of multiple equilibria that may be ranked based on the presence of binding information constraints and on welfare. Moreover, I show that a strong connection of the scope for existence and for indeterminacy of equilibria with the underlying policy regime. I also find that the presence of binding multiple reserve requirements help in reducing the scope for financial fragility and panic equilibria.

abstract: Traditional deterministic reserve requirements rely on ad-hoc, rule of thumb methods to determine adequate reserve in order to ensure a reliable unit commitment. Since congestion and uncertainties exist in the system, both the quantity and the location of reserves are essential to ensure system reliability and market efficiency. The modeling of operating reserves in the existing deterministic reserve requirements acquire the operating reserves on a zonal basis and do not fully capture the impact of congestion. The purpose of a reserve zone is to ensure that operating reserves are spread across the network. Operating reserves are shared inside each reserve zone, but intra-zonal congestion may block the deliverability of operating reserves within a zone. Thus, improving reserve policies such as reserve zones may improve the location and deliverability of reserve. As more non-dispatchable renewable resources are integrated into the grid, it will become increasingly difficult to predict the transfer capabilities and the network congestion. At the same time, renewable resources require operators to acquire more operating reserves. With existing deterministic reserve requirements unable to ensure optimal reserve locations, the importance of reserve location and reserve deliverability will increase. While stochastic programming can be used to determine reserve by explicitly modelling uncertainties, there are still scalability as well as pricing issues. Therefore, new methods to improve existing deterministic reserve requirements are desired. One key barrier of improving existing deterministic reserve requirements is its potential market impacts. A metric, quality of service, is proposed in this thesis to evaluate the price signal and market impacts of proposed hourly reserve zones. Three main goals of this thesis are: 1) to develop a theoretical and mathematical model to better locate reserve while maintaining the deterministic unit commitment and economic dispatch structure, especially with the consideration of renewables, 2) to develop a market settlement scheme of proposed dynamic reserve policies such that the market efficiency is improved, 3) to evaluate the market impacts and price signal of the proposed dynamic reserve policies. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Electrical Engineering 2015

Submitted by Marilia Taveira (marilia.taveira@gmail.com) on 2012-11-06T15:02:22Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação_Marilia_Final_PosDefesa.pdf: 823265 bytes, checksum: 5a33364964aaba850db6b89019c42d01 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Vitor Souza (vitor.souza@fgv.br) on 2012-11-06T15:06:12Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação_Marilia_Final_PosDefesa.pdf: 823265 bytes, checksum: 5a33364964aaba850db6b89019c42d01 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2013-02-04T13:08:59Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação_Marilia_Final_PosDefesa.pdf: 823265 bytes, checksum: 5a33364964aaba850db6b89019c42d01 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-05-31 / Este estudo tem dois objetivos principais. O primeiro, discutir o propósito da popularização das políticas macroprudenciais no pós-crise – que surgiram como uma das soluções para a complexa relação entre estabilidade de preços e estabilidade financeira – suas vantagens em relação à abordagem anteriormente predominante – as políticas microprudenciais – e formas de interação com a tradicional política monetária. O segundo grande objetivo reproduzir um modelo da geração novo-keynesiana que contempla um sistema bancário e características que permitem replicar a condução de uma política macroprudencial (colaterais, depósitos compulsórios, requerimentos mínimos de capital) a fim de analisar a resposta de variáveis macroeconômicas a mudanças nestes parâmetros. / This study has two main goals. The first one is to discuss the popularization of macroprudential policies in the after crisis, as a solution for the complex linkage between financial stability and price stability, its benefits compared to the previous approach – the microprudential regulation – and the interaction between macroprudential and conventional monetary policies. The second main goal is to simulate a DSGE model with a banking system and subject to reserve requirements and collateral requirements that allow one to assess the effects of macroprudential tools utilization over macroeconomic variables.