VAR analysis on a measure of bank lending standards collected by the Federal Reserve reveals that shocks to lending standards are significantly correlated with innovations in commercial loans of banks and in real output. Credit standards strongly dominate loan rates in explaining variation in...

Deterioration in the link between M2 and GDP, along with large prediction errors, led the Federal Reserve to downgrade M2 as a reliable indicator in 1993. We argue that the financial condition of depository institutions was a major factor behind this unusual pattern of M2 growth. When...

A deterioration in the link between the M2 monetary aggregate and GDP, along with large errors in predicting M2 growth, led the Board of Governors to downgrade the M2 aggregate as a reliable indicator of monetary policy in 1993. In this paper, we argue that the financial condition of depository...

Charge-offs on credit card loans are rising sharply. While many analysts blame this trend on an expanding supply of credit cards, a closer look reveals the importance of two demand factors - wealth and the share of the population at peak borrowing age - in explaining the increase in bad debt

Thousands of U.S. households filed for bankruptcy just before the bankruptcy law changed in 2005. That rush-to-file was more pronounced, we find, in states with more generous bankruptcy exemptions and lower credit scores. We take that finding as evidence that the new law effectively reduces...

The pattern of disagreement between bond raters suggests that bank and insurance firms are inherently more opaque than other firms. Moody's and Standard and Poor's split more frequently over these financial intermediaries, and the splits are more lopsided, as theory here predicts. Uncertainty...

Evidence in this paper suggests that a close banking relationship a loan commitment in particular relaxes cash flow and cash management constraints on firms. Given firms' prospects (Q), the investment and cash flow correlation is substantially lower when firms have a bank loan commitment. The...