Currency unions limit the ability of the central bank to use interest rate policy to accommodate asymmetric shocks. I show that collateral policy can serve to dampen asymmetric shocks in a currency area when these shocks also affect the collateral held by banks and when collateral portfolios of...

To explain the existence of stop-loss rules in financial institutions, we develop a principal/agent model, where an investment firm (the principal) has to rely on the expertise of a trader (the agent) to invest in a risky asset (a future contract, say). When the trader faces a limited liability...

In this paper, we investigate the performance-growth relation of French mutual funds. Using panel techniques, we find that capital inflows to French past top performing funds are not as strong as expected. This result suggests that there exist barriers to investment, that may come from the fact...

We analyze the risk-taking behavior of heterogeneous intermediaries that are protected by limited liability and choose both their amount of leverage and the risk exposure of their portfolio. Due to the opacity of the financial sector, outside providers of funds cannot distinguish 'prudent'...

We propose a rigorous and flexible methodological framework to select and calibrate initial shocks to be used in bank stress test scenarios based on statistical techniques for detecting outliers in time series of risk factors. Our approach allows us to characterize not only the magnitude, but...

This paper documents that monetary policy affects credit supply through banks’ cost of funding. Using administrative credit-registry and regulatory bank data, we find that banks can incur an increase in their funding costs of at least 30 basis points before they adjust their lending. For...

The amplitude of leverage procyclicality is heterogeneous across banks and across countries. This paper introduces international diversification of bank balance sheet as a factor of this observed heterogeneity, with a special emphasis on currency diversification. Based on a new theoretical...

We use data on granular holdings of debt and Credit Default Swaps (CDS) referencing non-financial corporations across financial investors, to investigate how CDS reallocate credit risk and whether this increases investor-level riskiness. To guide our investigation, we propose a methodology to...

This paper quantifies the effects on welfare of misspecified monetary policy objectives in a stylized DSGE model. We show that using inappropriate objectives generates relatively large welfare costs. When expressed in terms of ‘consumption equivalent' units, these costs correspond to permanent...

In this paper, we estimate two small, forward-looking, macroeconomic models for the US and Germany and we compare the implied optimal monetary policy rules. Both models have a standard structure: an I-S curve, a Phillips curve, a short term interest-rate rule and a long term interest rate...