"We analyze financial collapses, such as the one that occurred during the U.S. Great Depression, from the perspective of a monetary model with multiple equilibria.The multiplicity arises from the presence of a strategic complementarity due to increasing returns to scale in the intermediation...

What causes a financial crisis? Can crises be anticipated or even avoided? Should governments and international institutions intervene? Based on ten years of research, the authors develop a theoretical approach to analyzing financial crises and use the latest economic theories to begin to...