The global financial crisis that emerged in mid-2007 has caused considerable economic disruptions in the United States and elsewhere, and exposed major flaws in the global financial system. After examining the origins of the crisis, this paper recommends specific policy responses to resolve the...

The global financial crisis that emerged in mid 2007 has caused considerable economic disruptions in the United States and elsewhere, and exposed major flaws in the global financial system. After examining the origins of the crisis, this paper recommends specific policy responses to resolve the...

The global financial and economic crisis has struck Iceland with extreme force. Iceland’s three main banks, accounting for almost all of the banking system, failed in October 2008. They were unable to resist the deterioration in global financial markets following the failure of Lehman...

The notable increase in international reserve holdings over the past decade and their use during the global financial crisis of 2008/2009 has sparked renewed interest in the analysis of the optimal level of reserve holdings, in particular in countries which are subject to sudden stops. Less...

We argue that there is a connection between the interbank market for liquidity and the broader financial markets, which has its basis in demand for liquidity by banks. Tightness in the interbank market for liquidity leads banks to engage in what we term “liquidity pull-back,” which involves...

We study how and to what extent private households are affected by the recent financial crisis and how their financial decisions are inuenced by this shock. Our analysis reveals that individuals with low levels of financial literacy are less likely to have invested in the stock market and thus...

This paper introduces and analyzes an evolutionary model of a financial market with a risk-free asset. Focus is on the study of local stability of the wealth dynamics through the application of recent results on the linearization and stability of random dynamical systems (Evstigneev, Pirogov and...

There has been a long debate about whether speculators are stabilizing or not. We consider a model where speculators have a stabilizing role in normal times, but may also provoke large risk panics. The very feature that makes arbitrageurs liquidity providers in normal times, namely their...

This paper provides evidence for a causal effect of equity prices on corporate investment and employment. We use fire sales by distressed equity funds during the 2007--2009 financial crisis to identify substantial exogenous underpricing. Firms whose stocks are most underpriced have considerably...

The early stage of the recent ?financial crisis was marked by large value losses for bank stocks. This paper identifies the equity funds most affected by this valuation shock and examines its consequences for the non-financial stocks owned by the respective funds. We find that (i) ownership...