This paper studies the question of the economic scale of financial institutions. We show that banks actively smooth book equity by adjusting payouts to achieve a desired trajectory of book equity. The countercyclical nature of net payouts of financial institutions leads to procyclical book...

This paper considers the problem of information acquisition in an intermediated market, where the specialists have access to superior technology for acquiring information. These informational advantages of specialists relative to households lead to disagreement between the two groups, changing...

The growth of wholesale-funded credit intermediation has motivated liquidity regulations. We analyze a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model in which liquidity and capital regulations interact with the supply of risk-free assets. In the model, the endogenously time-varying tightness of...

We document the cyclical properties of the balance sheets of different types of intermediaries. While the leverage of the bank sector is highly procyclical, the leverage of the nonbank financial sector is acyclical. We propose a theory of a two-agent financial intermediary sector within a...

We build a general equilibrium model with financial frictions that impede the effectiveness of monetary policy in stimulating output. Agents with heterogeneous productivity can increase investment by levering up, but this increases interim liquidity risk. In equilibrium, the more productive...

Using data on balance sheets of both financial and nonfinancial sectors of the economy, we use a "demand system" approach to study how lender composition and willingness to provide credit affect the relationship between credit expansions and real activity. A key advantage of jointly modeling the...