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Join us for the first in the Summer 2021 QCGBF Virtual Seminar Series, with Robin Greenwood who will be presenting 'Reflexivity in Credit Markets'.
Reflexivity is the idea that investors' biased beliefs affect market outcomes, and that market outcomes in turn affect investors' beliefs. We develop a behavioral model of the credit cycle featuring such a two-way feedback loop. In our model, investors form beliefs about firms' creditworthiness, in part by extrapolating past default rates. Investor beliefs influence firms' actual creditworthiness because firms that can refinance maturing debt on favorable terms are less likely to default in the short run—even if fundamentals do not justify investors' generosity. Our model is able to match many features of credit booms and busts, including the imperfect synchronization of credit cycles with the real economy, the negative relationship between past credit growth and the future return on risky bonds, and "calm before the storm" periods in which firm fundamentals have deteriorated but the credit market has not yet turned.
About the Speaker
Robin Greenwood is the George Gund Professor of Finance and Banking at Harvard Business School. At HBS he is the Faculty director of the Behavioral Finance and Financial Stability project, co-chairs the Business Economics PhD program, and served as Finance Unit Head from 2018-2021. He is a member of the Financial Advisory Roundtable of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research.
Robin's research is in behavioral and institutional finance, with a particular focus on "macro-level" market inefficiencies such as asset price bubbles. He has also coauthored research on the role of government and central banks in the debt markets. His research awards include the 2015 Brattle Group Distinguished Paper for an outstanding corporate finance paper published in the Journal of Finance, and the inaugural 2014 Jack Treynor Prize awarded by the Institute for Quantitative Research in Finance.
Robin received a Ph.D. from Harvard in Economics, and B.S. degrees in Economics and Mathematics at MIT. He has taught in both years of the MBA curriculum as well as the PhD program.
At this event
Director of the Qatar Centre for Global Banking & Finance
Advisor, Qatar Centre for Global Banking & Finance