We develop a two-sector monetary model with a centralized and decentralized market. Activities in the centralized market resemble those in a standard New Keynesian economy with price rigidities. In the decentralized market agents engage in bilateral exchanges for which money is essential. The...

We provide new evidence that a disruption in credit supply played a quantitatively significant role in the unprecedented contraction of employment during the Great Depression. To analyze the role of financing frictions in firms' employment decisions, we use a novel, hand-collected dataset of...

Why are downturns following episodes of high valuations of firms so severe and long? Why do firms take on high debt when they anticipate high valuations, and underperform subsequently? In this paper, we propose a theory of financing cycles where the control rights to enforce claims in an asset...

This paper investigates the determinants of inequality in human capital with an emphasis on the role of the credit constraints. We develop and estimate a model in which individuals face uninsured human capital risks and invest in education, acquire work experience, accumulate assets and smooth...

During the Great Recession, regions of the United States that experienced the largest declines in household debt also experienced the largest drops in consumption, employment, and wages. Employment declines were larger in the nontradable sector and for firms that were facing the worst credit...

We investigate the effect of sovereign risk on credit supply, using August 1999 Earthquake as an exogenous shock leading to an increase in Turkey's default risk. Using data on universe of banks between 1997-2012, we show that, banks with higher ex-ante exposures to government bonds suffered a...

One of the explanations for global imbalances is the self-financing behavior of credit-constrained firms in rapidly growing emerging markets. We use an extensive firm-level data set from several Asian countries during 2002-2011, and test the micro foundation of this theory by estimating the...

We empirically and theoretically examine how consumer credit access affects displaced workers. Empirically, we link administrative employment histories to credit reports. We show that an increase in credit limits worth 10% of prior annual earnings allows individuals to take .15 to 3 weeks longer...

Are firms more resilient to systemic banking crises in economies with higher levels of social trust? Using firm-level data in 34 countries from 1990 through 2011, we find that liquidity-dependent firms in high-trust countries obtain more trade credit and suffer smaller drops in profits and...

We propose a novel mechanism, "financial dampening," whereby loan retrenchment by banks attenuates the effectiveness of monetary policy. The theory unifies an endogenous supply of illiquid local loans and risk-sharing among subsidiaries of bank holding companies (BHCs). We derive an IV-strategy...