This paper builds a small open economy business cycle model with labor and financial market frictions that incorporates frictional, endogenous self-employment entry and a link between formal credit markets, informal credit, and the labor market. The paper then shows that the model is consistent...

This paper studies from an empirical and theoretical perspective the systemic and bank-level effects of imposing reserve requirements (RR) in foreign currency in an economy with a heavily dollarized financial system. The paper empirically characterizes banks responses to the RR carried out by...

We extend the Central Bank of Malta's core DSGE model - MEDSEA - with housing and financial frictions to capture the important theoretical links betweeen house prices, credit and consumption. The model features a rich set of features that are inherent to small open economies in a monetary union....

This paper outlines a stress testing framework for the household sector in Malta based on micro data. The analysis depends on granular data relating to income, expenses, and the value of liquid assets from the third wave of the Household Finance and Consumption Survey and assesses the financial...

Using dynamic factor models and state-space techniques we quantify financial cycles for twenty European countries over the period 1960Q1–2015Q4 capturing imbalances across credit, housing, bond and equity markets. The paper documents the existence of slow-moving and persistent financial cycles...

Evidence on the effects of negative interest rates on bank lending is inconclusive so far. By applying a difference-in-difference estimation using granular loan level data with a large coverage from Austria, I show, contrary to some previous findings, that the introduction of a negative deposit...

This paper reviews the steps that China has taken towards financial reform with a particular focus on capital account liberalisation and internationalisation of the use of the renminbi. After a slowdown in reform momentum during the global financial crisis, there is a clear push towards reform,...

In November 2008, the Federal Reserve announced the first of a series of unconventional monetary policies, which would include asset purchases and forward guidance, to reduce long-term interest rates. We investigate the behavior of shorts, considered sophisticated investors, before and after a...

We examine a “Rotten Kid” model (Becker 1974) where a player with social preferences interacts with an egoistic player. We assume that social preferences are intentionbased rather than outcome-based. In a very general multi-stage setting we show that any equilibrium must involve mutually...

We study the problem of an investor that buys an equity stake in an entrepreneurial venture, under the assumption that the former cannot monitor the latter’s operations. The dynamics implied by the optimal incentive scheme is rich and quite different from that induced by other models of...