Most economies experience episodes of persistent real exchange rate appreciations, when the question arises whether there is a need for intervention to protect the export sector. This paper presents a model of irreversible destruction where exchange rate intervention may be justified if the...

There are striking and terrifying similarities between the sudden failure of a heart and that of a financial system. In the medical literature, the former is referred to as sudden cardiac arrest. By analogy, I refer to its financial counterpart as a sudden financial arrest. In this article I...

This paper measures how securitized assets, including mortgage-backed securities and other asset-backed securities, have shifted across financial institutions during this crisis and how the availability of financing has accommodated such shifts. Sectors dependent on repo financing—in...