We use a model a la Bewly-Huggett-Ayagari to explore the effects of a credit crunch on consumer spending. Households borrow and lend to smooth idiosyncratic income shocks facing an exogenous borrowing constraint. We look at the economy response after an unexpected permananent tightening of this...

Prices aggregate the information in the economy by sending signals about the scarcity of the goods traded. However prices can be expressed in terms of different units of account. Does the choice of the unit of account matter for informational efficiency? I develop a model where the choice of...

We develop a model of investment with financial constraints and use it to investigate the relation between investment and Tobin's q. A firm is financed partly by insiders, who control its assets, and partly by outside investors. When their wealth is scarce, insiders earn a rate of return higher...

We characterize an environment in which agents have private information and trade in decentralized markets. First, we show that all the useful information is learned in the long run. Second, we show that agents with private information receive rents, and the value of information is positive....

with financially constrained agents.

and to increase the level of long term investment. In this case, partial integration opens up the opportunity for the occurrence of extreme events. That is, the cost of liquidity can become unusually high and the optimal consumption can display both higher volatility than in autarky and negative...

We explore this class of models for two reasons. The first is that it appears to capture many of the aspects often ascribed to fluctuations, the role of animal spirits in affecting demand---spirits that we interpret here as coming from a rational reaction to signals about the future---, the role...

In this paper, we argue that shocks that affect the private agents' ability to borrow are precisely the type of shocks that can push the economy in a liquidity trap. We show that, when preferences display prudence, these shocks tend to make consumers more cautious, leading both to lower levels...

This paper explores the role of the financial sector in facilitating the flow of funds from borrowers to lenders. Unlike in traditional models of banking, the role of financial firms in our model is not to raise funds from lenders (depositors) and use them to make loans to borrowers. Rather...

In this paper, we present a tractable model of a small open economy where the main driver of international borrowing is investment. Debt is non-state-contingent and the choice of default is endogenous, as in Eaton and Gersovitz (1981). By introducing a simple AK technology, we obtain a setup...