In this paper we argue that the persistent global imbalances, the subprime crisis, and the volatile oil and asset prices that followed it, are tightly interconnected. They all stem from a global environment where sound and liquid financial assets are in scarce supply

This paper discusses two simple decompositions for aggregate productivity analysis in the presence of distortions and in general equilibrium. The first is a generalization of Baqaee and Farhi (2017) and the second is due to Petrin and Levinsohn (2012). In the process, we propose a new...

How does an increase in the size of the market due to fertility, immigration, or trade integration, affect welfare and real GDP? We study this question using a model with heterogeneous firms, fixed costs, and monopolistic competition. We decompose the change in welfare into changes in technical...

We study supply and demand shocks in a general disaggregated model with multiple sectors, multiple factors, input-output linkages, downward nominal wage rigidities, credit-constraints, and a zero lower bound. We use the model to understand how the Covid-19 crisis, an omnibus of supply and demand...

This paper analyzes the possibility and the consequences of rational bubbles in a dy- namic economy where financially constrained firms demand and supply liquidity. Bub- bles are more likely to emerge, the scarcer the supply of outside liquidity and the more limited the pledgeability of...

We consider a dynamic Mirrlees economy in a life cycle context and study the op- timal insurance arrangement. Individual productivity evolves as a Markov process and is private information. We use a first order approach in discrete and continuous time and obtain novel theoretical and numerical...

The paper elicits a mechanism by which private leverage choices exhibit strategic complementarities through the reaction of monetary policy. When everyone engages in maturity transformation, authorities have little choice but facilitating refinancing. In turn, refusing to adopt a risky balance...

Since the fall of 2008, option smiles have been clearly asymmetric: out-of-the-money currency options point to large expected exchange rate depreciations (appreciations) for high (low) interest rate currencies, suggesting that disaster risk is priced in currency markets. To study the price of...