A recent literature shows how an increase in volatility reduces leverage. However, in order to explain pro-cyclical leverage it assumes that bad news increases volatility, that is, it assumes an inverse relationship between first and second moments of asset returns. This paper suggests a reason...

A recent literature shows how an increase in volatility reduces leverage. However, in order to explain pro-cyclical leverage it assumes that bad news increases volatility, that is, it assumes an inverse relationship between first and second moments of asset returns. This paper suggests a reason...

We show that cross-border financial flows arise when countries differ in their abilities to use assets as collateral. Financial integration is a way of sharing scarce collateral. The ability of one country to leverage and tranche assets provides attractive financial contracts to investors in the...

The steady application of Quantitative Easing (QE) has been followed by big and non-monotonic effects on international asset prices and international capital flows. These are difficult to explain in conventional models, but arise naturally in a model with collateral. This paper develops a...

The steady application of Quantitative Easing (QE) has been followed by big and non-monotonic effects on international asset prices and international capital flows. These are difficult to explain in conventional models, but arise naturally in a model with collateral. This paper develops a...

The literature on leverage until now shows how an increase in volatility reduces leverage. However, in order to explain pro-cyclical leverage it assumes that bad news increases volatility. This paper suggests a reason why bad news is more often than not associated with higher future volatility....

While the Dodd-Frank Act (DFA) broadens the regulatory reach to reduce systemic risks to the U.S. financial system, it does not address some important risks that could migrate to or emanate from entities outside the federal safety net. At the same time, it limits the types of interventions by...

In recent years, U.S. banks have increasingly relied on deposits from financial intermediaries, especially money market funds (MMFs), which collect funds from large institutional investors and lend them to banks. In this paper, we show that intermediation through MMFs allows investors to limit...

We identify and track over time the factors that make the financial system vulnerable to fire sales by constructing an index of aggregate vulnerability. The index starts increasing quickly in 2004, before most other major systemic risk measures, and triples by 2008. The fire-sale-specific...

We use confidential and novel data to measure the benefit to broker-dealers of being affiliated with a bank holding company and the resulting access to internal sources of funding. We accomplish this by comparing the balance sheets of broker-dealers that are associated with bank holding...