We find that that the Current Expected Credit Loss (CECL) standard would slightly dampen fluctuations in bank lending over the economic cycle. In particular, if the CECL standard had always been in place, we estimate that lending would have grown more slowly leading up to the financial crisis...

The Federal Open Market Committee indicated in its September 2017 post-meeting statement that it will initiate in October a balance sheet normalization program to gradually reduce its securities holdings. This action will put in place a policy of reinvesting and redeeming portions of the...

We provide new evidence that credit supply shifts contributed to the U.S. subprime mortgage boom and bust. We collect original data on both government and private mortgage insurance premiums from 1999-2016, and document that prior to 2008, premiums did not vary across loans with widely different...

This paper explores the economic issues related to systemically important insurance companies, using an example from the Great Depression, the National Surety Company. National Surety was a large and diverse insurance company that experienced a major crisis in 1933 due to losses from its...

In this paper, I examine the effects of a countercyclical fiscal policy that gave firms additional tax refunds -- additional liquidity -- at the end of the past two recessions. I take advantage of a discontinuity in the slope of the tax refund formula to estimate the policy's impact. I find that...