The housing boom that preceded the Great Recession was the result of an increase in credit supply driven by looser lending constraints in the mortgage market. This view on the fundamental drivers of the boom is consistent with four empirical observations: the unprecedented rise in home prices,...

We examine the dynamic effects of credit shocks using a large data set of U.S. economic and financial indicators in a structural factor model. The identified credit shocks, interpreted as unexpected deteriorations of credit market conditions, immediately increase credit spreads, decrease rates...

We document the emergence of a disconnect between mortgage and Treasury interest rates in the summer of 2003. Following the end of the Federal Reserve's expansionary cycle in June 2003, mortgage rates failed to rise according to their historical relationship with Treasury yields, leading to...

Credit spreads display occasional spikes and are more strongly countercyclical in times of financial stress. Financial crises are extreme cases of this nonlinear behavior, featuring deep recessions and sharp losses in bank equity. We develop a macroeconomic model with a banking sector in which...

In a financial system in which balance sheets are continuously marked to market, asset price changes appear immediately as changes in net worth, eliciting responses from financial intermediaries who adjust the size of their balance sheets. We document evidence that marked-to-market leverage is...

We use a two-country New Keynesian model with balance sheet constraints to investigate the magnitude of international spillovers of U.S. monetary policy. Home borrowers obtain funds from domestic households in domestic currency, as well as from residents of the foreign economy (the United...

Stabilization policies frequently aim to boost spending as a means to increase GDP. Spending does not necessarily translate into production, however, especially when inventories are involved. We look at the cash-for-clunkers program that helped finance the purchase of nearly 700,000 vehicles in...

Nighttime lights data are a measure of economic activity whose measurement error is plausibly independent of the errors of most conventional indicators. Therefore, we can use nighttime lights as an independent benchmark to assess existing measures of economic activity (Pinkovskiy and...

The sensitivity of housing demand to mortgage rates and available leverage is key to understanding the effect of monetary and macroprudential policies on the housing market. However, since there is generally no exogenous variation in these variables that is independent of confounding factors...

This paper explores financial stability policies for the shadow banking system. I tie policy options to economic mechanisms for shadow banking that have been documented in the literature. I then illustrate the role of shadow bank policies using three examples: agency mortgage real estate...