The Dynamic Effects of Aggregate Demand and Supply Disturbances in Models with Heterogeneous Inputs

This paper examines the aggregate implications of sovereign credit risk in a business cycle model in which banks are exposed to risky government debt. An increase in the probability of a future sovereign default leads to a reduction in credit to firms because of two channels. First, it lowers...

We address the question of whether and how a sovereign should reduce its external indebtedness when default is a significant possibility, with a particular focus on whether a sovereign should buy back or dilute existing long-term sovereign bonds. Our main finding is that when reduction of debt...

In this paper, we propose a tractable variant of the open economy neoclassical growth model that emphasizes political economy and contracting frictions. The political economy frictions involve disagreement and political turnover, while the contracting friction is a lack of commitment regarding...

Bulow and Rogoff (1989) show that a country that has access to a sufficiently rich asset market cannot commit to repay its debts and therefore should be unable to borrow. This is because for any debt contract, there exists a time at which the country is made better off by defaulting and...

This paper studies the optimal trade-off between commitment and flexibility in an intertemporal consumption/savings choice model. Individuals expect to receive relevant information regarding their own situation and tastes - generating a value for flexibility - but also expect to suffer from...

How does the optimal design of macroprudential capital controls depend on the ability of some agents to circumvent regulation? To address this question, we study the interaction between a regulated and an unregulated sphere in a model economy where pecuniary externalities calls for ex-ante...

Credit constraints that link a private agent's debt to market-determined prices embody a credit externality that drives a wedge between competitive and constrained socially optimal equilibria, inducing private agents to ``overborrow." The externality arises because agents fail to internalize the...

This paper studies the link between banking crises, sovereign default and government guarantees. A banking crisis can lead to a domestic credit crunch, which can be mitigated by government guarantees. However, the provision of bailout guaran- tees exposes the government to potentially severe...

We develop a new framework for studying the implementation of monetary policy through the banking sector. Banks are subject to a maturity mismatch problem leading to precautionary holdings of reserves. Through various instruments, monetary policy alters tradeos banks face between lending,...