This paper reviews the literature on financial crises focusing on three specific aspects. First, what are the main factors explaining financial crises? Since many theories on the sources of financial crises highlight the importance of sharp fluctuations in asset and credit markets, the paper...

This paper examines the generation of financial crises in developing economies and shows that the microeconomic structure of the financial sector is a crucial factor in creating the conditions for a crisis. Structural problems of the financial system in developing countries, including implicit...

We collect new data to assess the importance of supply-side credit market frictions by studying the impact of financial sector recapitalization packages on the growth performance of firms in a large cross-section of 50 countries during the recent crisis. We develop an identification strategy...

This paper provides a unified analysis for the onset of the 1998 financial crisis and the strong economic recovery afterward in Russia and other former Soviet Union countries. Before the crisis a banking failure arose owing to the coexistence of a lemons credit market and high government...

Economic variables are known to move asymmetrically over the business cycle: quickly and sharply during crises, but slowly and gradually during recoveries. Not known is the fact that this asymmetry is stronger in countries with less-developed financial systems. This new fact is documented using...

Does the mere presence of big banks affect macroeconomic outcomes? In this paper, we develop a theory of granularity (Gabaix, 2011) for the banking sector, introducing Bertrand competition and heterogeneous banks charging variable markups. Using this framework, we show conditions under which...

Every major financial crisis leaves its unique footprint on economic thought. The early banking crises taught us the importance of financial sector liquidity and the lender of last resort. The Great Depression highlighted the devastating effects of bank failures and the need for counter-cyclical...

This paper explores the behavior of the U.S. economy during the interwar period from the perspective of a model in which the existence of non-convexities in the intermediation process gives rise to a multiplicity of equilibria. The resulting indeterminancy is resolved through a sunspot process...