We study interventions to restore efficient lending and investment when financial markets fail because of adverse selection. We solve a design problem where the decision to participate in a program offered by the government can be a signal for private information. We charac terize optimal...

We analyze public interventions to alleviate debt overhang among private firms when the government has limited information and limited resources. We compare the efficiency of buying equity, purchasing existing assets, and providing debt guarantees. With symmetric information, all the...

The paper considers the response of a small, open dependent economy to a variety of fiscal and financial shocks. It also examines the influence of alternative budget-balancing rules on the response of the economy to external shocks, such as a change in the world interest rate. The approach...

This paper uses a model with a continuum of equilibrium unemployment rates to explore the effectiveness of fiscal policy. The existence of multiple steady states is explained by a model of costly search and recruiting that leads to a situation of bilateral monopoly. Using this framework, I...

This paper studies how the effects of government spending vary with the economic environment. Using a panel of OECD countries, we identify fiscal shocks as residuals from an estimated spending rule and trace their macroeconomic impact under different conditions regarding the exchange rate...

This paper studies the effectiveness of Euro Area (EA) fiscal policy, during the recent financial crisis, using an estimated New Keynesian model with a bank. A key dimension of policy in the crisis was massive government support for banks—that dimension has so far received little attention in...

Banking systems have rapidly grown to a point where for many countries bank assets amount to multiples of GDP. As a consequence, government’s capacity to provide stability-enhancing fiscal guarantees against systemic crises can no longer be taken for granted. As regulation of dynamic financial...

During the recent financial crisis, central banks have provided liquidity and governments have set up rescue programmes to restore confidence and stability, often against the LLR principle advocated by Bagehot. Using a model of a systemic bank suffering from liquidity shocks, we find that the...

On May 9, 2010 euro zone countries announced the creation of the European Financial Stability Facility as a response to the sovereign debt crisis. This paper investigates the impact of this announcement on bank share prices, bank CDS spreads and sovereign CDS spreads. The main private...