This paper analyzes the implication of inefficient financial intermediation for crisis management in a country where firms are highly-indebted. The analysis is based on a model in which firms rely on bank credit to finance their working capital needs and lenders face high state verification and...

This paper addresses the following question: what ties together the traditional commercial banking activities of deposit-taking and lending? We begin by observing that since banks often lend via commitments, or credit lines, their lending and deposit-taking may be two manifestations of the same...

We examine the interaction between three kinds of concentrated owners commonly found in an emerging market: family-run business groups, domestic financial institutions, and foreign financial institutions. Using data from India in the early 1990s, we find evidence that domestic international...

Poor financial health of intermediaries coincides with low asset prices and high risk premiums. Is this because intermediaries matter for asset prices, or simply because their health correlates with economy-wide risk aversion? In the first case, return predictability should be more pronounced...

We study the role of global financial intermediaries in international lending. We construct a model of the world economy, in which heterogeneous borrowers issue risky securities purchased by financial intermediaries. Aggregate shocks transmit internationally through financial intermediaries' net...

This chapter discusses recent developments in the literature involving applications of industrial organization methods to finance. We structure our discussion around a simple model of a financial intermediary that concentrates its attention either on (i) the retail market and hence engages in a...

The paper provides an overview of cryptocurrencies and decentralized finance. The discussion lays out potential benefits and challenges of the new system and presents a comparison to the traditional system of financial intermediation. Our analysis highlights that while the DeFi architecture...

I study a model of the financial sector in which intermediation among debt financed banks gives rise to an endogenous core-periphery network - few highly interconnected and many sparsely connected banks. Endogenous intermediation generates excessive systemic risk in the financial network....

The modern financial system features complicated financial intermediation chains, with each layer performing a certain degree of credit/maturity transformation. We develop a dynamic model in which an entrepreneur borrows from overlapping-generation households via layers of funds, forming a...

We provide empirical evidence of the causal effects of changes in financial intermediaries' net worth in the aggregate economy. Our strategy identifies financial shocks as high-frequency changes in the market value of intermediaries' net worth in a narrow window around their earnings...