This paper empirically examines the benefits of relationship banking to banks, in the context of consumer credit markets. Using a unique panel dataset that contains comprehensive information about the relationships between a large bank and its credit card customers, we estimate the effects of...

We study the effects of securitization on renegotiation of distressed residential mortgages over the current financial crisis. Unlike prior studies, we employ unique data that directly observe lender renegotiation actions and cover more than 60% of the U.S. mortgage market. Exploiting...

We explore the effects of mandatory third-party review of mortgage contracts on the terms, availability, and performance of mortgage credit. Our study is based on a legislative experiment in which the State of Illinois required 'high-risk' mortgage applicants acquiring or refinancing properties...

The meltdown in residential real-estate prices that commenced in 2006 resulted in unprecedented mortgage delinquency rates. Until mid-2009, lenders and servicers pursued their own individual loss mitigation practices without being significantly influenced by government intervention. Using a...

The main rationale for policy intervention in debt renegotiation is to enhance such activity when foreclosures are perceived to be inefficiently high. We examine the ability of the government to influence debt renegotiation by empirically evaluating the effects of the 2009 Home Affordable...

Macroeconomists have for some time been aware that the New Keynesian Phillips curve, though highly popular in the literature, cannot explain the persistence observed in actual inflation. We argue that one of the more prominent alternative formulations, the Fuhrer and Moore (1995) relative...

Most wage-contracting models with rational expectations fail to replicate the persistence in inflation observed in the data. We argue that coordination problems and multiple equilibria are the keys to explaining inflation persistence. We develop a wage-contracting model in which workers are...

Taking the mean-variance portfolio model as a benchmark, we compute the optimally diversified portfolio for banks located in France, Germany, the U.K., and the U.S. under different assumptions about currency hedging. We compare these optimal portfolios to the actual cross-border assets of banks...

We use a new panel dataset of credit card accounts to analyze how consumers responded to the 2001 federal income tax rebates. We estimate the monthly response of credit card payments, spending, and debt, exploiting the unique, randomized timing of the rebate disbursement. We find that on average...

Using a unique sample of comparable online and in-person loan transactions, we study the determinants of arm's-length and inside lending focusing on the differential information content across debt types. We find that soft private information primarily underlies relationship lending whereas hard...