In earlier work we documented two episodes in which a sharp fiscal consolidation was associated with a surprisingly large expansion in private domestic demand. In this paper we draw on further evidence to investigate if and when fiscal policy changes can have such non-Keynesian effects. In the...

This paper proposes a theoretical explanation of the empirical finding that private consumption increases in response to an increase in government spending. The explanation requires two ingredients. First, labor demand expands (e.g. prices are sticky). Second, general non-separable preferences...

We document that an increase in government purchases generates a rise in consumption, the real and the product wage, and a fall in the markup. This evidence is robust across alternative empirical methodologies used to identify innovations in government spending (structural VAR vs. narrative...

Private pension provision faces the challenging task of providing stable income streams during retirement. The challenge has increased markedly in the last decades due to volatile financial markets, falling interest rates and the withdrawal of employers and external insurers as risk bearers of...

The dangers of shouting ``fire'' in a crowded theater are well understood, but the dangers of rushing to the exit in the financial markets are more complex. Yet, the two events share several features, and I analyze why people crowd into theaters and trades, why they run, what determines the...

Financial crises are associated with reduced volumes and extreme levels of rates for term inter-bank transactions, such as in one-month and three-month LIBOR markets. We provide an explanation of such stress in term lending by modelling leveraged banks’ precautionary demand for liquidity. When...

We model the interplay between cash and debt policies in the presence of financial constraints. While saving cash allows constrained firms to hedge against future cash flow shortfalls, reducing current debt – ‘saving borrowing capacity’ – is a more effective way of securing investment in...

Despite much work on hedging in incomplete markets, the literature still lacks tractable dynamic hedges in plausible environments. In this article, we provide a simple solution to this problem in a general incomplete-market economy in which a hedger, guided by the traditional minimum-variance...

We develop a dynamic model of investment, cash holdings, financing, and risk management policies in which firms face financing frictions and are subject to permanent and temporary cash flow shocks. In this model, target cash holdings depend on the long-term prospects of the firm, implying that...

This article introduces a method to quantify the effect of a firm’s strategic choices on the risk profile of its profits at different horizons. We combine a demand system for differentiated products with counterfactual paths of risk factors. Prices, costs and quantities respond endogenously to...