How did investors holding assets backed by subprime residential mortgages react when Treasury Secretary Paulson announced the so-called "teaser freezer" plan to modify mortgages in December 2007? We apply event-study methodology to the ABX index, the only source of daily securities prices in...

Non-occupant homeowners differ from owner occupants in that they tend to have lower-risk credit characteristics, such as higher credit scores, but may also have weaker incentives to maintain mortgage payments when housing values fall. During the recent housing boom, the share of mortgage...

This paper examines the history of mREITs and their broader role in the REIT industry. Additionally, it reviews how mREITs operate, how they are regulated, the risks they face, how they manage these risks, and the dangers they pose for the broader financial system

We examine a period during the prevalence of the gold standard in the United States to provide evidence that speculation about a currency peg can have damaging effects on bank balance sheets. In particular, the defeat of the pro-silver candidate in the 1896 presidential election was associated...

We show that the housing wealth collapse of 2006-09 had a persistent impact on employment across counties in the U.S. In particular, localities that had a larger loss in housing net worth during that period had more depressed employment as late as 2016, without a commensurate population...

We say that a large financial institution is "resolvable" if policymakers would allow it to go through unassisted bankruptcy in the event of failure. The choice between bankruptcy or bailout trades off the higher loss imposed on the economy in a potentially disruptive resolution against the...

We study a finite-depositor version of the Diamond-Dybvig model of financial intermediation in which the bank and all depositors observe withdrawals as they occur. We derive the constrained efficient allocation of resources in closed form and show that this allocation provides liquidity...

This paper studies the interaction between financial fragility and over-the-counter markets. In the model, the financial sector is composed of a large number of investors divided into different groups, which are interpreted as financial institutions, and a large number of dealers. Financial...

Interbank networks amplified the contraction in lending during the Great Depression. Banking panics induced banks in the hinterland to withdraw interbank deposits from Federal Reserve member banks located in reserve and central reserve cities. These correspondent banks responded by curtailing...

We construct a novel signal of bank expectations utilizing confidential data and a regulatory constraint imposed on bank internal capital markets during the 2008 crisis that made internal equity injections to commercial bank subsidiaries difficult to reverse. When the US government initiated a...