In the face of rising interest rates in 2022, banks mitigated interest rate exposure of the accounting value of their assets but left the vast majority of their long-duration assets exposed to interest rate risk. Data from call reports and SEC filings shows that only 6% of U.S. banking assets...

This paper studies the effects of contagion on bank lending spreads and output fluctuations in Argentina. The first part presents the analytical framework, which analyzes the determination of bank lending spreads in the presence of verification and enforcement costs of loan contracts. The second...

The 1980s S&L debacle is generally viewed as the result of: (1) sharply rising interest rates eliminating the net worth of thrifts funding fixed-rate loans with short-term deposits and (2) thrifts responding by taking even greater interest-rate and credit risks. The question investigated in this...

A bank or other financial institution is potentially subject to at least four types of risk: (1) Credit risk -- defaults or delays in repayments. (2) Fraud -- embezzlement or insider abuse. (3) Liquidity risk -- or high cost of obtaining needed cash. (4) Interest rate risk -- differential...

Traditionally, banks and financial intermediaries borrow short and lend long. This causes a risk of negative net worth (and failure, under simplifying assumptions), because the present discounted value of the assets is more volatile than that of the liabilities. This paper utilizes a new option...

International data suggests that fluctuations in the level and volatility of the world interest rate (as measured by the US treasury bill rate) are positively correlated with both the level and volatility of sovereign spreads in emerging economies. We incorporate an estimated time-varying...

We study a novel policy tool--interest rate uncertainty--that can be used to discourage inefficient capital inflows and to adjust the composition of external accounts between short-term securities and foreign direct investment (FDI). We identify the trade-offs faced in navigating between...

Studies of the dynamics of bond risk premia that do not account for the corresponding dynamics of bond risk are hard to interpret. We propose a new approach to modeling bond risk and risk premia. For each of the US and China, we reduce the government bond market to its first two...

We show that maturity transformation does not expose banks to significant interest rate risk--it actually hedges banks' interest rate risk. We argue that this is driven by banks' deposit franchise. Banks incur large operating costs to maintain their deposit franchise, and in return get...

Do bankrupt firms impose negative externalities on their non-bankrupt competitors? We propose and analyze a collateral channel in which a firm's bankruptcy reduces collateral values of other industry participants, thereby increasing the cost of external debt finance industry wide. To identify...