Following the fall of the Lehman Brothers in 2008, the U.S. saw the worst recession since the Great Depression in the 1920's. This dissertation presents a summary of two previous major U.S. recessions, the Great Depression and the Savings and Loans Crisis, and an analysis of the root causes and consequences of the 2007-2009 recession is also provided, namely the bursting of the housing bubble, loose monetary policy, lax financial regulation, and misperception of risk. The Troubled Asset Relief Program, a bailout program implemented following the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act in October 2008, is then discussed. Using county-level panel data, the effect of the implementation of TARP on unemployment patterns is then studied. The results show that TARP negatively affected unemployment patterns, so that TARP alleviated the sharp rise in unemployment after its inception

In this thesis, we aim to find the effect of economic crisis announcements arising from the US subprime mortgage crisis and European sovereign debt crisis on the market volatility in theBRIC countries. We implement a GARCH model in order to compare the effect of individual news announcements and find that the US crisis had a bigger impact on BRIC market volatility than the European crisis. Of particular note, we find the US bailout had a higher impact than the failure of Lehman Brothers or any European crisis dates that were considered. We then examine the volatility transmission mechanism by implementing a VAR model to create a spillover index. Following, we apply a rolling window approach, creating spillover plots which show that both return and volatility spillovers are affected by crisis announcements. The importance of our results are related to investor decision making, particularly the relationship between market return and risk in developing country markets. Far to our knowledge, no recent literature has compared the two crises in the way we have nor with the datasets we have used.

A topical issue in financial economics is the development of appropriate stochastic dynamic models for banking items and behavior. The issue here is to fulfil the need to generalize the more traditional discrete-time models of banking activity to a Levy process setting. In this thesis, under the assumption that the loan market is imperfectly competitive, we investigate the evolution of banking items such as bank assets (cash, bonds, shares, Treasuries, reserves, loans and intangible assets), liabilities (demand deposits) and bank capital (bank equity, subordinate debt and loan loss reserves). Here we consider the influence of macroeconomic factors and profitability as well as its indicators return on assets (ROA) and return on equity (ROE). As far as bank assets are concerned, we note that loan pricing models usually reflect the financial funding cost, risk premium to compensate for the risk of default by the borrower, a premium reflecting market power exercised by the bank and the sensitivity of the cost of capital raised to changes in loans extended. On the other hand, loan losses can be associated with an offsetting expense called the loan loss provision (LLP), which is charged against Nett profit. This offset will reduce reported income but has no impact on taxes, although when the assets are finally written off, a tax-deductible expense is created. An important factor influencing loan loss provisioning is regulation and supervision. Measures of capital adequacy are generally calculated using the book values of assets and equity. The provisioning of loans and their associated write-offs will cause a decline in these capital adequacy measures, and may precipitate increased regulation by bank authorities. Greater level of regulation generally entail additional costs for the bank. Currently, this regulation mainly takes the form of the Basel II Capital Accord that has been implemented on the worldwide basis since 2008. It is clear that bank profitability is a major indicator of financial crises for households, companies and financial institutions. An example of this from the 2007-2008 subprime mortgage crisis (SMC) is the U.S. bank, Wachovia Corp., who reported a big loss as from the first quarter of 2007 and eventually was bought by the world's largest bank, Citigroup, on 29 September 2008. A further example from the SMC is that both the failure of the Lehman Brothers investment bank and the acquisition in September 2008 of Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns by Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase, respectively, were preceded by a decrease in profitability and an increase in the price of loans and loan losses. The subprime mortgage crisis is characterized by contracted liquidity in the global credit markets and banking system. The level of liquidity in the banking sector affects the ability of banks to meet commitments as they become due without incurring substantial losses from liquidating less liquid assets. Liquidity, therefore, provides the defensive cash or near-cash resources to cover banks' liability. An undervaluation of real risk in the subprime market is cascading, rippling and ultimately severely adversely affecting the world economy. The downturn in the U.S. housing market, risky lending and borrowing practices, and excessive individual and corporate debt levels have caused multiple adverse effects tumbled as the US housing market slumped. Banks worldwide are hoarding cash and showing a growing reluctance to lend, driving rates that institutions charge to each other on loans to record highs. Also, global money markets are inoperative, forcing increased injections of cash from central banks. The crisis has passed through various stages, exposing pervasive weaknesses in the global financial system and regulatory framework. The stochastic dynamics of the aforementioned banking items assist in formulating a maximization problem that involves endogenous variables such as profit consumption, the value of the bank's investment in loans and provisions for loan losses as control variants. In particular, we demonstrate that the bank is able to maximize its expected utility of discounted profit consumption over a random time interval, [t,r], and terminal profit at time r. Here the term profit consumption refers to the consumption of the bank's profits by dividend payments on equity and interest and principal payments on subordinate debt. The associated Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equation has a smooth solution when the optimal controls are computed by means of power, logarithmic and exponential utility functions. This enables us to make a direct comparison between the economic properties of the solutions for different choices of the utility function. In keeping with the main theme of this thesis, we simulate the financial indices ROE and ROA that are two measures of bank profitability. We further discuss optimization with power utility where we show the convergence of the Markov Chain Approximation Method (MCAM) and the impact of varying the model parameters in the form of loan loss severity, P, and loan loss frequency, <f>. We investigate the connections between the banking models and Basel II capital accord as well as the current subprime mortgage crises. As a way of conclusion, we provide remarks about the main issues discussed in the thesis and speculate about future research directions. The contents of this thesis is based on 3 peer-reviewed journal articles (see [105], [106] and [107]) and 1 peer-reviewed conference proceedings paper (see [104]). In addition, the paper [108] is currently being prepared for submission to an accredited journal. / Thesis (Ph.D. (Applied Mathematics))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2009.

A topical issue in financial economics is the development of appropriate stochastic dynamic models for banking items and behavior. The issue here is to fulfil the need to generalize the more traditional discrete-time models of banking activity to a Levy process setting. In this thesis, under the assumption that the loan market is imperfectly competitive, we investigate the evolution of banking items such as bank assets (cash, bonds, shares, Treasuries, reserves, loans and intangible assets), liabilities (demand deposits) and bank capital (bank equity, subordinate debt and loan loss reserves). Here we consider the influence of macroeconomic factors and profitability as well as its indicators return on assets (ROA) and return on equity (ROE). As far as bank assets are concerned, we note that loan pricing models usually reflect the financial funding cost, risk premium to compensate for the risk of default by the borrower, a premium reflecting market power exercised by the bank and the sensitivity of the cost of capital raised to changes in loans extended. On the other hand, loan losses can be associated with an offsetting expense called the loan loss provision (LLP), which is charged against Nett profit. This offset will reduce reported income but has no impact on taxes, although when the assets are finally written off, a tax-deductible expense is created. An important factor influencing loan loss provisioning is regulation and supervision. Measures of capital adequacy are generally calculated using the book values of assets and equity. The provisioning of loans and their associated write-offs will cause a decline in these capital adequacy measures, and may precipitate increased regulation by bank authorities. Greater level of regulation generally entail additional costs for the bank. Currently, this regulation mainly takes the form of the Basel II Capital Accord that has been implemented on the worldwide basis since 2008. It is clear that bank profitability is a major indicator of financial crises for households, companies and financial institutions. An example of this from the 2007-2008 subprime mortgage crisis (SMC) is the U.S. bank, Wachovia Corp., who reported a big loss as from the first quarter of 2007 and eventually was bought by the world's largest bank, Citigroup, on 29 September 2008. A further example from the SMC is that both the failure of the Lehman Brothers investment bank and the acquisition in September 2008 of Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns by Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase, respectively, were preceded by a decrease in profitability and an increase in the price of loans and loan losses. The subprime mortgage crisis is characterized by contracted liquidity in the global credit markets and banking system. The level of liquidity in the banking sector affects the ability of banks to meet commitments as they become due without incurring substantial losses from liquidating less liquid assets. Liquidity, therefore, provides the defensive cash or near-cash resources to cover banks' liability. An undervaluation of real risk in the subprime market is cascading, rippling and ultimately severely adversely affecting the world economy. The downturn in the U.S. housing market, risky lending and borrowing practices, and excessive individual and corporate debt levels have caused multiple adverse effects tumbled as the US housing market slumped. Banks worldwide are hoarding cash and showing a growing reluctance to lend, driving rates that institutions charge to each other on loans to record highs. Also, global money markets are inoperative, forcing increased injections of cash from central banks. The crisis has passed through various stages, exposing pervasive weaknesses in the global financial system and regulatory framework. The stochastic dynamics of the aforementioned banking items assist in formulating a maximization problem that involves endogenous variables such as profit consumption, the value of the bank's investment in loans and provisions for loan losses as control variants. In particular, we demonstrate that the bank is able to maximize its expected utility of discounted profit consumption over a random time interval, [t,r], and terminal profit at time r. Here the term profit consumption refers to the consumption of the bank's profits by dividend payments on equity and interest and principal payments on subordinate debt. The associated Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equation has a smooth solution when the optimal controls are computed by means of power, logarithmic and exponential utility functions. This enables us to make a direct comparison between the economic properties of the solutions for different choices of the utility function. In keeping with the main theme of this thesis, we simulate the financial indices ROE and ROA that are two measures of bank profitability. We further discuss optimization with power utility where we show the convergence of the Markov Chain Approximation Method (MCAM) and the impact of varying the model parameters in the form of loan loss severity, P, and loan loss frequency, <f>. We investigate the connections between the banking models and Basel II capital accord as well as the current subprime mortgage crises. As a way of conclusion, we provide remarks about the main issues discussed in the thesis and speculate about future research directions. The contents of this thesis is based on 3 peer-reviewed journal articles (see [105], [106] and [107]) and 1 peer-reviewed conference proceedings paper (see [104]). In addition, the paper [108] is currently being prepared for submission to an accredited journal. / Thesis (Ph.D. (Applied Mathematics))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2009.

The goal of my thesis is to analyze anti-crisis measures of the hotel Westside located in the United States of America. The first chapter explains theoretical approaches to crisis and its impacts. It depicts crisis management approaches to successful crisis managing. In the next part of my thesis I look closer at the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis. I tried to show details of subprime mortgage crisis spreading into the financial sector and also its impacts on tourism industry. The last chapter of my thesis compares theoretical approaches with the real steps in the crisis. After analyzing the real hotel behavior, I can conclude the hotel managed the crisis successfully. Right identification of the crisis, choosing effective price strategy and additional financial resource utilization contributed to smooth managing of the crisis. There were mistakes made by human resources department. They made the impact of the crisis on the hotel bigger but their realizing taught the management of the hotel how to behave in the future.

The subprime mortgage crisis and the resultant inflationary monetary policy in the USA have left the Chinese economy subject to four risks in particular. First, China's exports to the USA might continue to decline. Second, in the medium term, the higher US inflation rate will lead to a weak dollar, which will negatively affect China's exports. Third, in the long term, when the US Federal Reserve decreases money supply to control inflation, the US economy might enter another recession, hurting China's exports further. Fourth, China's foreign exchange reserve assets might suffer heavy losses when the US inflation rate rises. Conventional foreign exchange investment strategies are insufficient for dealing with these four risks. Investment by China in the major US banks is suggested in the present paper. This strategy would mitigate if not eliminate all four risks. China could gain considerable financial returns on investments with only moderate risk.

This thesis demonstrates that consumer leverage can contribute to financial crises such as the subprime mortgage crisis characterised by increased bankruptcy prospects and tightened credit access. A recession may follow even when the leveraged sector is not a production sector and can be triggered by seeming positive events such as a technological innovation and a relaxation of borrowing conditions. The first preliminary chapter updates the Bernanke, Gertler and Gilchrist (1999) approach with financial frictions in the production sector to a two-sector model with consumption and housing. It shows that credit frictions in the capital financing decisions of housing firms are not sufficient to capture the negative consumer experience with falling housing prices and relaxed credit access during the recession. The second chapter brings the model closer to the subprime mortgage crisis by shifting credit constraints to the consumer mortgage market. Increased supply of houses lowers asset prices and reduces the value of the real estate collateral used in the mortgage which in turn worsens the leverage of indebted consumers. A relaxation of borrowing conditions turns credit-constrained households into a potential source of disturbances themselves when market optimism allows them to raise their leverage with little downpayment. Both cases demonstrate that although households are not production agents, their worsening debt levels can trigger a lasting financial downturn. The third chapter develops a chained mortgage contracts model where both homeowner consumers and the financial institutions that securitize their mortgage loan are credit-constrained. Adding credit constraints to the financial sector that provides housing mortgages creates opportunities for risk sharing where banks shift some of the downturn onto indebted consumers in order to hasten their own recovery. This consequence is especially evident in the case of relaxed credit access for banks. Financial institutions repair their debt position relatively fast at the expense of consumers whose borrowing ability is squeezed for a long period despite the fact that they may not be the source of the disturbance. The result mirrors the recent subprime mortgage crisis characterised by a sharp but brief decline for banks and a protracted recovery for mortgaged households.

Loans originated to borrowers with lower incomes and/or lower credit scores are classified as subprime. The spatial distribution of subprime loans is alarmingly concentrated in minority-dominated and low-income areas. Beginning in mid 2006 the subprime mortgage market began to see elevated levels of delinquent and defaulted loans. The causes are many but generally traced to the beginning of the reset periods for adjustable rate mortgages and the evaporation of demand for securitized subprime mortgages. As delinquent and default rates in subprime mortgages rise, areas with a concentration of high-risk borrowers are at risk to decline. The decline can be measured across four different groups of factors that indicate the health of a community. The four groups are: physical, institutional, socioeconomic and the residential body. The residential body factor group refers to the citizens of a community and their civic involvement. The analysis uses binary logistic regression to identify communities that are commonly associated with subprime mortgage defaults. Subprime loans in the ten-county Atlanta Metropolitan Area are the focus of the study. The analysis treats each census tract in the ten counties as an individual community. The sample loans are geocoded to the census tract level allowing defaulted loans to be tied to communities and their characteristics. The data is collected from a variety of sources including the U.S. Census Bureau, the Atlanta Regional Commission and RR Donnelley s Credit Risk Management database. The results indicate that the probability of subprime mortgage defaults are associated with higher vacancy rates, population loss, declining property tax revenues, depreciating property values, and declining owner reinvestment in their properties. Potential spill over impacts to the community include higher crime rates, decreased school funding and degradation of public infrastructure.

Orientador: José Carlos de Souza Braga / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Economia / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-17T14:14:54Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Teixeira_LucasAzeredodaSilva_M.pdf: 2429408 bytes, checksum: 63f83d0828c01c76f9abcb7f264cb891 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010 / Resumo: Esta dissertação discute as origens do processo que mais chamou atenção na economia norte-americana, antes da eclosão da crise do subprime: o crescente endividamento do consumidor. Partindo da idéia de que este "modelo" da economia americana não poderia ser imitado por nenhum outro país, buscam-se as origens das assimetrias do sistema monetário internacional no ocaso de Bretton Woods e no surgimento do atual padrão monetário internacional. Em seguida, é exposta a trajetória de endividamento/enriquecimento líquido dos macrossetores institucionais da economia norte americana, para, desta forma, mostrar um dos principais fatos estilizados da economia norte-americana: o crescente endividamento das famílias a partir dos anos 1980. Estas mantiveram, de forma geral, um padrão de gastos menor que o fluxo de rendas, de modo a terem um superávit financeiro (enriquecimento líquido) até então. A partir do início dos anos 1980, este superávit reduziu-se paulatinamente, devido ao crescente endividamento, alcançando valores negativos e crescentes, na segunda metade dos anos 1990. Segundo a hipótese adotada neste trabalho, as causas deste endividamento são encontradas na mudança na distribuição de renda (aumento da concentração) e nas desregulamentações e inovações financeiras, que se desenvolvem a partir do fim dos anos 1970. Tendo em vista que este aspecto vem sendo bem explorado na literatura especializada, a dissertação concentra sua explicação na mudança no padrão de distribuição de renda. Analisando por esse prisma, chega-se a conclusão que não se trata de endividamento das famílias, ou dos consumidores, mas, mais especificamente, dos trabalhadores norte-americanos, que tiveram que se endividar para financiar seus gastos, em um contexto de salários reais estagnados. Por fim, os rumos da economia norte-americana pós-crise são brevemente avaliados / Abstract: The purpose of this dissertation is to discuss the origins of a critical process in the North American economy before the subprime crisis, namely, the increasing debt of households. Considering that north-american economic "model" couldn't be copied by any other country, the origins of the asymmetries within the international monetary system(s) are pursued in the Bretton Woods case, as well as, the development of the current international monetary pattern. Then the net-borrowing path of institutional macro sectors are presented as contributing factors containing strong evidence for one of the more significant and stylized facts of North American economy, i.e. the growing debt of primarily American households since the 1980s. Prior to this, spending, in general, was notably less than their annual income flow, resulting in a financial surplus. Beginning in the 1980s, this surplus had been gradually reduced due to an increasing indebtedness and, in the second half of the 1990s, a mounting deficit was introduced. It is argued that the causes of this indebtedness are alterations in income distribution (an increased concentration of income) and the process of financial deregulation and innovation, developed in the late 1970s. Considering that the latter has previously been explored in great detail, this particular examination explores the changes on income distribution pattern. Based on this perspective, it is concluded that the indebtedness does not come from families or households in general but, more specifically, from North American workers, who had to finance their spending through an on-going stagnation, or even deterioration, of the real wages at their disposal. Further, the direction of the North American economy after the crisis is evaluated in the contexts of these findings / Mestrado / Ciências Economicas / Mestre em Ciências Econômicas

過去三、四十年來世界各地發生金融危機的頻率較從前高出許多，探究原因後可以發現，與各國陸續開放金融自由化以及國際金融市場快速成長有極大的關係。除此之外，在各國中，金融危機的發生通常具備一些共同特徵，諸如危機發生時會導致資金外流、匯率大幅貶值、股市重挫、產出減少、進出口減少…等影響。因此，面對這一波次級房貸風暴，本研究也即將檢視美國在總體經濟數據上各方面的表現，希望能利用1970年以來已開發國家和開發中國家歷年來所發生的貨幣、銀行危機下所代表的各種總體經濟數據，經過轉化整理後，透過Logistic迴歸模型建立一個迴歸方程式，以了解金融危機的發生與實質匯率、進出口…等其他解釋變數之間的關聯，並利用此模型探測現階段次級房貸風暴對美國可能引發金融危機的機率值，以探討其合理性。 / We find that the frequencies of the financial crises are higher for the past forty years in the world. It is due to the financial liberalization and international financial markets which grow rapidly. Besides, financial crises usually company with some common characteristics such as capital outflow, the depreciation of the foreign exchange, the shock of the stock market, the decreasing of the production and so on. Therefore, in order to understand this financial crisis of the subprime mortgage, this thesis surveys the economic data of developed countries and developing countries from 1970s and figures out the performances of these countries under balance-of -payments crises or banking crisis. We use the logistic regression model and transform the data to construct a regression model. After understanding the relationship between the explaining variables, we use this model to predict the probability of possible financial crisis in U.S. under the subprime mortgage crisis and then discuss the rationality of those predicted values.