We study the output costs of 40 systemic banking crises since 1980. Most, but not all, crises in our sample coincide with a sharp contraction in output from which it took several years to recover. Our main findings are as follows. First, the current financial crisis is unlike any others in terms...

We study a Lucas asset pricing model that is standard in all respects representative agent's subjective beliefs about endowment growth are distorted. Using constant-relative-risk-aversion (CRRA) utility a CRRA coefficient below ten that exhibit, on average, excessive pessimism over expansions...

The Euler equations derived from a broad range of intertemporal asset pricing models, together with the first two unconditional moments of asset returns, imply a lower bound on the volatility of the intertemporal marginal rate of substitution. We develop and implement statistical tests of these...

In analyzing the macroeconomic impact of asset price booms and crashes, it is the disasters that are the true concern. This suggests a different approach to risk; one based on examining the keeping the probability of output deviating from its trend (or price level deviations from its target...

Countries around the world differ substantially in the relative importance of their banks and capital markets in providing investment financing. This paper examines one potential explanation for the cross-country differences in the importance of banks and capital market financing of investment....

This paper investigates the ability of a representative agent model with time separable utility to explain the mean vector and the covariance matrix of the risk free interest rate and the return to leveraged equity in the stock market. The paper generalizes the standard calibration methodology...

We examine the negative relationship between the rate of growth in credit and the rate of growth in output per worker. Using a panel of 20 countries over 25 years, we establish that there is a robust correlation: the higher the growth rate of credit, the lower the growth rate of output per...

Stress tests applied to individual institutions are an important tool for evaluating financial resilience. However, financial systems are typically complex, heterogeneous and rapidly changing, raising questions about the adequacy of conventional tests. In this paper, we interpret the current...

In this history of the first decade of ECB policy, we also discuss key challenges for the next decade. Beyond the ECB's track record and an array of published critiques, our analysis relies on unique source material: extensive interviews with current and former ECB leaders and with other...

Realizing that their traditional instruments were inadequate for responding to the crisis that began on 9 August 2007, Federal Reserve officials improvised. Beginning in mid-December 2007, they implemented a series of changes directed at ensuring that liquidity would be distributed to those...