We estimate tax multipliers in a "Blanchard-Yaari" consumption model where Ricardian equivalence is broken because the private sector discounts the future at a faster rate than the real rate of interest. The model fits U.S. data since 1955 extremely well-entailing a discount wedge of around 20...

While the relationship between volatility and credit risk is central to much of the literature on finance and banking, it has been largely neglected in empirical macro studies on sovereign defaults. This paper presents new econometric estimates for a panel of 25 emerging market countries over...

This paper shows that recent manifestations of sudden stops (SSs) in international capital flows have striking parallels in the early financial globalization era preceding World War I. All main capital-importing countries then faced episodic capital flow reversals averaging some 5 percent of GDP...

We study a banking model in which banks invest in a riskless asset and compete in both deposit and risky loan markets. The model predicts that as competition increases, both loans and assets increase; however, the effect on the loans-to-assets ratio is ambiguous. Similarly, as competition...

An increasing body of evidence suggests that the behavior of the economy has changed in many fundamental ways over the last decades. In particular, greater financial deregulation, larger wealth accumulation, and better policies might have helped lower uncertainty about future income and lengthen...

This paper assesses the implementation of IMF-supported programs using measures of program interruptions, compliance with conditionality, and the share of committed funds disbursed. The econometric model allows an evaluation of the importance for program implementation of political conditions in...

This paper studies two new models in which banks face a non-trivial asset allocation decision. The first model (CVH) predicts a negative relationship between banks' risk of failure and concentration, indicating a trade-off between competition and stability. The second model (BDN) predicts a...