The financial crisis modified drastically and rapidly the European financial system's political economy, with the emergence of two competing narratives. First, government agencies are frequently described as being at the mercy of the financial sector, routinely hijacking political, regulatory...

The recent crisis was characterized by massive illiquidity. This paper reviews what we know and don't know about illiquidity and all its friends: market freezes, fire sales, contagion, and ultimately insolvencies and bailouts. It first explains why liquidity cannot easily be apprehended through...

This paper studies whether policymakers should wait to intervene until a financial crisis strikes or rather act in a preemptive manner. This question is examined in a relatively simple dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model in which crises are endogenous events induced by the presence of...

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...