"Liability dollarization,'' namely intermediation of capital inflows in units of tradables into domestic loans in units of aggregate consumption, adds three important effects driven by real-exchange-rate fluctuations that alter standard models of Sudden Stops significantly: Changes on the debt...

Collateral constraints widely used in models of financial crises feature a pecuniary externality: Agents do not internalize how borrowing decisions taken in "good times" affect collateral prices during a crisis. We show that agents in a competitive equilibrium borrow more than a financial...

The interaction between credit frictions, financial innovation, and a switch from optimistic to pessimistic beliefs played a central role in the 2008 financial crisis. This paper develops a quantitative general equilibrium framework in which this interaction drives the financial amplification...

This paper examines macroprudential policies in open emerging economies. It discusses how the recent financial crisis has provided a rationale for macroprudential policies to help manage the economy and the need for policymakers to monitor the financial cycle and systemic risks. It also...

Macroprudential policy holds the promise of becoming a powerful tool for preventing financial crises. Financial amplification in response to domestic shocks or global spillovers and pecuniary externalities caused by Fisherian collateral constraints provide a sound theoretical foundation for this...

In his seminal 1960 article Robert Mundell proposed a model of balance-of-payments crises in which confidence in the continuation of a currency peg depended on the observed holdings of central bank foreign reserves. We examine the implications of a reformulation of this view from the perspective...

This paper shows that the risk of devaluation can be an important factor accounting for the stylized facts of exchange-rate-based stabilizations. This conclusion follows from studying the quantitative implications of a two-sector equilibrium business cycle model of a small open economy...

This paper presents a model in which economic crises have positive effects on welfare. Periods of very high inflation create the incentive for the resolution of social conflict and thus facilitate the introduction of economic reforms and the achievement of higher levels of welfare. Policies to...

When a stabilization has significant distributional implications (as in the case of tax increases to eliminate a large budget deficit) different socio-economic groups will attempt to shift the burden of stabilization onto other groups. The process leading to a stabilization becomes a "war of...

This paper examines the role of output stabilization in the conduct of monetary policy. It argues that activist monetary policy in which the monetary authorities focus on output fluctuations in the setting of their policy instrument and in policy statements is likely to produce worse outcomes...