A Leverage-Based Measure of Financial Instability
38 Pages Posted: 29 Aug 2014 Last revised: 23 Mar 2021
Date Written: August 1, 2014
Abstract
The size and the leverage of financial market investors and the elasticity of demand of unlevered investors define MinMaSS, the smallest market size that can support a given degree of leverage. The financial system’s potential for financial crises can be measured by the stability ratio, the fraction of total market size to MinMaSS. We use that financial stability metric to gauge the buildup of vulnerability in the run-up to the 1998 Long-Term Capital Management crisis and argue that policymakers could have detected the potential for the crisis.
Keywords: leverage, financial crisis, financial stability, minimum market size for stability, MinMaSS, instability ratio, Long-Term Capital Management, LTCM
JEL Classification: E58, G01, G10, G20
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?
