We develop a tractable model to study the macroeconomic impacts of limited arbitrage by linking arbitrage activities with the macroeconomy through collateralization. We show that the interactions between speculative trading and the business cycle can work as a powerful transmission mechanism,...

We investigate the channel through which fluctuations in the market liquidity of real-sector repo collateral cause arbitrage crashes and failure of systemically important intermediaries during the global financial crisis. Intermediaries pledge productive capital as repo collateral to fund the...

Since 2009, stock markets have resided in a long bull market regime. Passive investment strategies have succeeded during this low-volatility growth period. From 2018 on, however, there was a transition into a more volatile market environment interspersed by corrections increasing in amplitude...

This paper presents empirical evidence of the role of financial conditions in China's business cycle. We estimate a Bayesian-VAR for the Chinese economy, incorporating a financial conditions index for China that captures movements across a range of financial variables, including interest rates...

The financial crisis of 2008, which started with an initially well-defined epicenter focused on mortgage backed securities (MBS), has been cascading into a global economic recession, whose increasing severity and uncertain duration has led and is continuing to lead to massive losses and damage...

We explore a view of the crisis as a shock to investor sentiment that led to the collapse of a bubble or pyramid scheme in financial markets. We embed this view in a standard model of the financial accelerator and explore its empirical and policy implications. In particular, we show how the...

Using the mechanics of creep in material sciences as a metaphor, we present a general framework to understand the evolution of financial, economic and social systems and to construct scenarios for the future. In a nutshell, highly non-linear out-of-equilibrium systems subjected to exogenous...

Abreu and Brunnermeier (2003) have argued that bubbles are not suppressed by arbitrageurs because they fail to synchronise on the uncertain beginning of the bubble. We propose an indirect quantitative test of this hypothesis and confront it with the alternative according to which bubbles persist...

We present a plausible micro-founded model for the previously postulated power law finite time singular form of the crash hazard rate in the Johansen-Ledoit-Sornette model of rational expectation bubbles. The model is based on a percolation picture of the network of traders and the concept that...