Historians claim that in the nineteenth century Catalan cotton manufacturers were giving informal credit to their clients, and were therefore unable to transfer this credit to the banking system. Such circumstances would have had a detrimental effect on the profitability of the cotton firms....

This paper quantitatively accounts for the cyclical dynamics of key macroeconomic housing and mortgage market variables using a tractable, search-theoretic model of housing with equilibrium mortgage default. To explain these dynamics, the model highlights the importance of liquidity spirals...

This paper investigates the macroeconomic effects of search risk in the housing market. To do so, I introduce a tractable directed search model of housing with mul- tidimensional buyer and seller heterogeneity. I incorporate this framework in an in- complete markets macroeconomic model with...

To attract retail time deposits, over 7,000 FDIC insured U.S. commercial banks publicly post their yield offers. I document an economically sizable and highly pro-cyclical cross-sectional dispersion in these yield offers during the period 1997 - 2011. Banks adjusted their yields rigidly and...

Borrowing decisions affect most households, with large stakes and implications for subfields as varied as macroeconomics and industrial organization. I review theoretical and empirical work on household debt: its prevalence, level, growth, and composition, as well as various measures of consumer...

We extend the analysis of the interbank market model of Gale and Yorulmazer (2013) by studying a larger set of trading mechanisms. A trading mechanism, which allows for randomized trading, restores efficiency. In contrast to Gale and Yorulmazer, we find that fire-sale asset prices are efficient...

We analyze the role of benchmarks in over-the-counter markets subject to search frictions. The publication of a benchmark can, under conditions, raise total social surplus by (i) increasing the volume of beneficial trade, (ii) reducing total search costs, and (iii) facilitating more efficient...

We analyze the role of benchmarks in over-the-counter markets subject to search frictions. The publication of a benchmark can, under conditions, raise total social surplus by (i) increasing the volume of beneficial trade, (ii) facilitating more efficient trade matching between dealers and...