The paper analyzes a very stylized model of crises and demonstrates how the degree of strategic complementarity in the actions of investors is a critical determinant of fragility. It is shown how the balance sheet composition of a financial intermediary, parameters of the information structure...

The European Central Bank (ECB) took many measures to combat the eurozone's rolling financial crisis. For providing desperately scarce dollars to eurozone banks, the ECB relied on the U.S. Federal Reserve. Using a novel econometric framework, we identify financial markets' response to the...

We develop a dynamic computational network model of the banking system where fire sales provide the amplification mechanism of financial shocks. Each period a finite number of banks offers a large, but finite, number of loans to households. Banks with excess liquidity also offer loans to other...

I find that the Eurosystem can stimulate the economy beyond the policy rate by increasing the size of its balance sheet or the monetary base, that is so-called quantitative easing. The transmission mechanism turns out to be different compared to traditional interest rate innovations: (i) whilst...

This paper attempts to reconcile the apparent contradiction between two strands of the literature on the effects of financial intermediation on economic activity. On the one hand, the empirical growth literature finds a positive effect of financial depth as measured by, for instance, private...

We examine to what extent banks' stock market values during the 2007-2012 financial crisis were driven by increases in the default risk of banks designated as globally systemically important by the Financial Stability Board. We find that bank market values hardly respond to changes in the...