This paper explores whether different funding structures-including the source, instrument, currency, and counterparty location of funding-affected the extent of financial stress experienced in various countries and sectors during the Covid-19 spread in early 2020. We measure financial stress...

Interconnectedness among insurers and reinsurers at a global level is not well understood and may pose a significant risk to the sector, with implications for the macroeconomy. Models of the complex interactions among reinsurers and with other participants in the financial system and the real...

Financial markets face the constant threat of cyber attacks. We develop a principal-agent model of cyber-attacking with fee-paying clients who delegate security decisions to financial platforms. We derive testable implications about clients' vulnerability to cyber attacks and about the fees...

Should monetary policy lean against housing market booms? We approach this question using a small-scale, regime-switching New Keynesian model, where housing market crashes arrive with a logit probability that depends on the level of household debt. This crisis regime is characterized by an...

This paper develops a model of an economy where bank credit supports both productive investment and individual consumption smoothing in the face of idiosyncratic income risk. Bank credit is constrained by bank equity capital. When policy-makers inject equity capital during financial crises, they...

This paper analyzes the implications of the global financial cycle for conventional and unconventional monetary policies and macroprudential policy in small, open economies such as Canada. The paper starts by summarizing recent work on financial cycles and their growing correlation across...

This paper studies optimal bank capital requirements in a model of endogenous bank funding conditions. I find that requirements should be higher during good times such that a macroprudential "buffer" is provided. However, whether banks can use buffers to maintain lending during a financial...

We propose a macroeconomic model in which adverse selection in investment drives the amplification of macroeconomic fluctuations, in line with prominent roles played by the credit crunch and collapse of the asset-backed security market in the financial crisis. Endogenous lending standards emerge...

We document five facts about banks: (1) market and book leverage diverged during the 2008 crisis, (2) Tobin's Q predicts future profitability, (3) neither book nor market leverage appears constrained, (4) banks maintain a market-leverage target that is reached slowly, and (5) precrisis, leverage...

The financial sector bailouts seen during the Great Recession generated substantial opposition and controversy. We assess the welfare benefits of government-funded emergency support to the financial sector, taking into account its effects on risk-taking incentives. In our quantitative general...