Foreign currency borrowing is perceived as a source of financial instability in emerging markets. We propose a theory where liability dollarization arises from an insurance motive of domestic savers. Because financial crises are associated with currency depreciations, savers are reluctant to...

Financial crises typically arise because firms and financial institutions choose balance sheets that expose them to aggregate risk. We propose a theory to explain these risk exposures. We study a financial accelerator model where entrepreneurs can issue state-contingent claims to consumers. Even...

imbalance.

The early 1980s marked the onset of two striking features of the current world macro-economy: the fall in US business cycle volatility (the quot;great moderationquot;) and the large and persistent US external imbalance. In this paper we argue that an external imbalance is a natural consequence...

We develop an ECON-EPI network model to evaluate policies designed to improve health and economic outcomes during a pandemic. Relative to the standard epidemiological SIR set-up, we explicitly model social contacts among individuals and allow for heterogeneity in their number and stability. In...

Does macroeconomic volatility/uncertainty affects accumulation of net foreign assets? In OECD economies over the period 1970-2012, changes in country specific aggregate volatility are, after controlling for a wide array of factors, significantly positively associated with net foreign asset...

This paper documents, using county level data, some geographical features of the US business cycle over the past 30 years, with particular focus on the Great Recession. It shows that county level unemployment rates are spatially dispersed and spatially correlated, and documents how these...