This paper analyzes how idiosyncratic risk, measured by the variance of firm-level idiosyncratic shocks, affects long-run growth when bankruptcy costs are present. These costs are incurred by creditors during the bankruptcy procedure of failing firms. In an endogenous growth model with bankruptcy costs where firms privately observe the outcome of idiosyncratic shocks, an increase in idiosyncratic risk reduces long-run growth. This happens because, when bankruptcy costs are present, higher idiosyncratic risk enlarges the wedge between the rental rate of capital and its marginal product, thereby slowing down capital accumulation. This growth-reducing effect of idiosyncratic risk is stronger when bankruptcy costs are higher. Empirical support for these propositions is provided in a growth regression that exploits cross-country variations in the dispersion of firms’ real sales growth as a proxy for idiosyncratic risk along with recovery rates as a measure that proxies the inverse of bankruptcy costs.

This paper studies the macroeconomic effects of shocks to idiosyncratic business risk in an economy with endogenously incomplete markets. I develop a model in which firms face idiosyncratic risk and obtain insurance from intermediaries through contracts akin to credit lines. Insurance is imperfect due to limited commitment in financial contracts. Although steady-state capital is higher than if firms were constrained to issue only standard equity, a rise in uncertainty about idiosyncratic business outcomes leads to an endogenous reduction in risk sharing. This deterioration in risk sharing results from a general-equilibrium shortage of pledgeable assets and implies that the economy’s response to an increase in idiosyncratic business risk can be amplified by financial contracting rather than dampened. In a parametrized version of the model, a rise in idiosyncratic business risk generates a large increase in uncertainty about aggregate investment.

In this paper, a discrete-time framework is proposed to value power exchange options with counterparty default risk, where counterparty risk is considered in a reduced-form setting and the variance processes of the underlying assets are captured by GARCH processes. In addition, the proposed model allows for the correlation between the intensity of default and the variances of the underlying assets by breaking down the total risk into systematic and idiosyncratic components. By dint of measure-change techniques and characteristic functions, we obtain the closed-form pricing formula for the value of power exchange options with counterparty default risk. Finally, numerical results are presented to show the power exchange option values.

We present the first step in a program to develop a comprehensive, unified equilibrium theory of asset and liability pricing. We give a mathematical framework for pricing insurance products in a multiperiod financial market. This framework reflects classical economic principles (like utility maximization) and generates pricing algorithms for non-hedgeable insurance risks.