The financial crisis of 2007-9 has sparked keen interest in models of financial frictions and their impact on macro activity. Most models share the feature that borrowers suffer a contraction in the quantity of credit. However, the evidence suggests that although bank lending to firms declines...

The current financial crisis has highlighted the changing role of financial institutions and the growing importance of the shadow banking system, which grew on the back of the securitization of assets and the integration of banking with capital market developments. This trend has been most...

Conventional discussions of balance sheet management by nonfinancial firms take the set of positive net present value (NPV) projects as given, which in turn determines the size of the assets of the firm. The focus is on the composition of equity and debt in funding such assets. In contrast, the...