Prior to the subprime crisis, mortgage brokers originated about 65% of all subprime mortgages. Yet little is known about their behavior during the runup to the crisis. Using data from New Century Financial Corporation, we find that brokers earned an average revenue of $5,300 per funded loan. We...

We develop a method for identifying and quantifying the fiscal channels that help finance government spending shocks. We define fiscal shocks as surprises in defense spending and show that they are more precisely identified when defense stock data are used in addition to aggregate macroeconomic...

We use an extensive data set of bilateral exposures on credit default swap (CDS) to estimate the impact on collateral demand of new margin and clearing practices and regulations. We decompose collateral demand for both customers and dealers into several key components, including the "velocity...

Recent scandals over the manipulation of LIBOR and foreign exchange benchmarks have spurred policy discussions of the appropriate design of financial benchmarks. We solve a version of the problem faced by a financial benchmark administrator. Acting as a mechanism designer, the benchmark...

We provide maximum likelihood estimators of term structures of conditional probabilities of bankruptcy over relatively long time horizons, incorporating the dynamics of firm-specific and macroeconomic covariates. We find evidence in the U.S. industrial machinery and instruments sector, based on...

We present a model for the equilibrium movement of capital between asset markets that are distinguished only by the levels of capital invested in each. Investment in that market with the greatest amount of capital earns the lowest risk premium. Intermediaries optimally trade off the costs of...

This paper provides a mathematical foundation for independent random matching of a large population, as widely used in the economics literature. We consider both static and dynamic systems with random mutation, partial matching arising from search, and type changes induced by matching. Under...

Here, I present and discuss a "10-by-10-by-10" network-based approach to monitoring systemic financial risk. Under this approach, a regulator would analyze the exposures of a core group of systemically important financial firms to a list of stressful scenarios, say 10 in number. For each...

We calculate equilibria of dynamic double-auction markets in which agents are distinguished by their preferences and information. Over time, agents are privately informed by bids and offers. Investors are segmented into groups that differ with respect to characteristics determining information...

We study how intermediation and asset prices in over-the-counter markets are affected by illiquidity associated with search and bargaining. We compute explicitly the prices at which investors trade with each other as well as marketmakers' bid and ask prices in a dynamic model with strategic...