This paper examines the effect of financial frictions on the strength of the monetary transmission mechanism. Credit channel theory implies that the transmission mechanism of monetary policy should be stronger in countries with high levels of financial frictions, all else equal. The intuition is...

Has structural change in consumer credit made consumption smoother? Given recent empirical analysis the consumer's inability to smooth consumption appears as prevalent as ever. In this paper, however, I show that structural change in consumer credit appears to have made consumption smoothing a...

In this paper I estimate the spatial diffusion of housing prices across U.S. states over a period from 1975 to 2011, showing how long and to what magnitude state-level housing prices are affected by a price shock emanating from surrounding states. I capture the spatial diffusion of regional...