COVID-19 has depressed economic activity around the world. The initial contraction may be amplified by the limited space for conventional monetary policy actions to support recovery implied by the low level of nominal interest rates recently. Model simulations assuming an initial contraction in...

Examining a parsimonious, yet comprehensive, set of recession signals yields three lessons. First, signals from financial markets, leading indicators of activity, and gauges of the macroeconomic environment are each useful at different horizons, with leading indicators and financial signals...

I study the long-run effects of credit market disruptions on real firm outcomes and how these effects depend on nominal wage rigidity at the firm level. Exploiting variation in firms' refinancing needs during the global financial crisis, I trace out firms' investment and growth trajectories in...

We empirically document that banks with greater exposure to high home price-to-income or price-to-rent ratio regions before the financial crisis of 2007--2009 have higher mortgage delinquency and charge-off rates and significantly higher probabilities of failure during the crisis even after...

This paper examines the mechanism through which banking sector distress affects the availability of credit. We use the experience of the United States during the Great Depression, a period of intense bank distress, to conduct our analysis. We utilize previously neglected data from a 1934 survey...

We study how a bank credit crunch -- a dramatic worsening of firm and consumer access to bank credit, such as the one observed over the Great Recession -- translates into job losses in U.S. manufacturing industries. To identify the impact of the recent credit crunch, we rely on differences in...

This paper studies how building and loan associations (B&Ls) slowly unwound their obligations following a set of financial shocks during the Great Depression, with a special focus on a group of particularly troubled B&Ls in Newark, NJ. Investors in B&Ls disagreed over whether to realize losses...