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...

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...

Two striking facts about international capital flows in emerging economies motivate this paper: (1) Governments hold large amounts of international reserves, for which they obtain a return lower than their borrowing cost. (2) Purchases of domestic assets by nonresidents and purchases of foreign...

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 studies overborrowing, financial crises and macro-prudential policy in an equilibrium model of business cycles and asset prices with collateral constraints. Agents in a decentralized competitive equilibrium do not internalize the negative effects of asset fire-sales on the value of...