A model of the domestic financial intermediation of foreign capital inflows based on agency costs is developed for studying financial crises in emerging markets. In equilibrium for the model economy, the banking system becomes progressively more fragile under imperfect prudential regulation and...

Short-term borrowing has often been blamed for precipitating financial crises. We argue that while the empirical association between a financial institution's, or country's, short-term borrowing and susceptibility to crises may, in fact, exist, the direction of causality is often precisely the...

Both investors and borrowers are concerned about liquidity. Investors desire liquidity because they are uncertain about when they will want to eliminate their holding of a financial asset. Borrowers are concerned about liquidity because they are uncertain about their ability to continue to...

Although internal policy mismanagements can be cited in most recent emerging market crises, they seldom account fully for the severity of these crises. The reluctance of international investors to provide the resources that would limit the extent of the reversal almost invariably plays a key...

We analyze a financial collapse, such as the one which occurred during the Great Depression, from the perspective of a monetary model with multiple equilibria. The economy we consider contains financial fragility due to increasing returns to scale in the intermediation process. Intermediaries...

There is a new and now extensive literature analyzing government policies for financial stability based on models with endogenous borrowing constraints. These normative analyses often build upon the concept of constrained efficient allocation, where the social planner is constrained by the same...

We study an endowment economy in which agents face income risk, as if uncertain returns on a portfolio, and agents can only make transfers in states when they are actively participating in the market. Besides income risk, agents also have limited and stochastic market access, with a probability...

"Liability dollarization,'' namely intermediation of capital inflows in units of tradables into domestic loans in units of aggregate consumption, adds three important effects driven by real-exchange-rate fluctuations that alter standard models of Sudden Stops significantly: Changes on the debt...

How much capital should financial intermediaries hold? We propose a general equilibrium model with a financial sector that makes risky long-term loans to firms, funded by deposits from savers. Government guarantees create a role for bank capital regulation. The model captures the sharp and...