We show empirically that banks' exposure to interest rate risk, or income gap, plays a crucial role in monetary policy transmission. In a first step, we show that banks typically retain a large exposure to interest rates that can be predicted with income gap. Secondly, we show that income gap...

Using loan level data, we provide evidence consistent with risk-shifting in the lending behavior of a large subprime mortgage originator { New Century Financial Corporation { starting in 2004. This change follows the monetary policy tightening implemented by the Fed in the spring of 2004, which...

This paper documents a steady increase in the average correlation of house price growth across US states over the 1976-2006 period and shows that this phenomenon can be explained in large part by the geographic integration of the banking market over this period. We theoretically derive an...

When a bank experiences a negative shock to its equity, one way to return to target leverage is to sell assets. If asset sales occur at depressed prices, then one bank's sales may impact other banks with common exposures, resulting in contagion. We propose a simple framework that accounts for...

When a bank experiences an adverse shock to its equity capital, one way to return to target leverage is to sell assets. The price impact of the fire sale may impact other institutions with common exposures, resulting in contagion. We propose a simple framework that accounts for this effect. This...

We present a model in which fire sales propagate shocks across bank balance sheets. When a bank experiences a negative shock to its equity, a natural way to return to target leverage is to sell assets. If potential buyers are limited, then asset sales depress prices, in which case one bank׳s...

The rents agents can extract from principals increase with the magnitude of incentive problems, which the literature usually takes as given. We endogenize it, by allowing agents to choose technologies that are more or less opaque and correspondingly prone to agency problems. In our overlapping...

We model the link between inequality, lack of political commitment, and ex-cessive risk taking. If politicians cannot commit to a long-term tax schedule, increasing returns to tax avoidance induce the middle class to take on non rewarded ?nancial risk despite risk aversion. Electoral pressure...

We study the relation between the ownership structure of financial assets and non-fundamental risk. We define an asset to be fragile if it is susceptible to non-fundamental shifts in demand. An asset can be fragile because of concentrated ownership, or because its owners face correlated or...