This paper provides a model of systemic panic among financial institutions with heterogeneous fragilities. Concerns about potential spillovers from each other generate strategic interaction among institutions, triggering a preemption game in which one tries to exit the market before the others...

We use the German Crisis of 1931, a key event of the Great Depression, to study how depositors behave during a bank run in the absence of deposit insurance. We find that deposits decline by around 20 percent during the run and that there is an equal outflow of retail and nonfinancial wholesale...

We estimate a workhorse dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model with an occasionally binding borrowing constraint. First, we propose a new specification of the occasionally binding constraint, where the transition between the unconstrained and constrained states is a stochastic...

I develop a framework of the buildup and outbreak of financial crises in an asymmetric information setting. In equilibrium, two distinct economic states arise endogenously: "normal times", periods of modest investment, and "booms", periods of expansionary investment. Normal times occur when the...

During banking crises, regulators often relax their normal requirements and refrain from closing financially troubled banks. I estimate the real effects of such regulatory forbearance by comparing differences in state-level economic outcomes by the amount of forbearance extended during the U.S....

Theories of systemic risk suggest that financial intermediaries’ balance-sheet constraints amplify fundamental shocks. We provide supportive evidence for such theories by decomposing the U.S. dollar risk premium into components associated with macroeconomic fundamentals and a component...

We study the informational channel of financial contagion in the laboratory. In our experiment, two markets with correlated fundamentals open sequentially. In both markets, subjects receive private information. Subjects in the market opening second also observe the history of trades and prices...

The London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) is a widely used indicator of funding conditions in the interbank market. As of 2013, LIBOR underpins more than $300 trillion of financial contracts, including swaps and futures, in addition to trillions more in variable-rate mortgage and student loans....

Wealthier individuals have stronger incentives to seek higher returns. We investigate theoretically the effect this has on long-run wealth inequality. Incorporating capital management into a standard RamseyCass-Koopmans model generates substantial long-run inequality: the majority of the...

In responding to the severity and broad scope of the financial crisis that began in 2007, the Federal Reserve has made aggressive use of both traditional monetary policy instruments and innovative tools in an effort to provide liquidity. In this paper, I examine the Fed’s actions in light of...