The dramatic 70 percent decline in Japanese commercial real estate prices from their peak in 1990 provides a natural experiment to test the extent to which a loan supply shock can affect real economic activity. Because the shock was external to U.S. credit markets, yet connected through the...

Even in a world with rational expectations, it has been well established theoretically that if the central bank possesses information superior to that available to the public, there is room for effective and socially beneficial countercyclical monetary policy. This paper tests whether...

We assess the conceptual and empirical features of a number of house price series for the United States. We then calculate a measure of the net upgrading of the existing stock of houses that took place during the 1950-1989 period and adjust price indexes for this net increase in quality....

A key provision of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Improvement Act of 1991 (FDICIA) was prompt corrective action (PCA). PCA emphasized early intervention by bank supervisors and was intended to limit forbearance by making supervisory intervention more timely and less discretionary....

This paper provides evidence that the Federal Reserve has an informational advantage over the public that can be exploited to improve activist monetary policy. The informational advantage derives from the Fed?s role as a bank supervisor, and it is shown to be of sufficient duration to be...

The relative wealth hypothesis of Froot and Stein (1991), motivated by the aggregate correlation between real exchange rates and foreign direct investment (FDI) observed in the 1980s, cannot explain one of the major shifts in FDI in the 1990s: the continued decline in Japanese FDI during a...

This study investigates the direct link between regulatory enforcement actions and the shrinkage of bank loans to sectors likely to be bank dependent. We focus on New England because that region has experienced both the widespread application of formal regulatory actions and substantial...

Japanese banks are among the world's largest global financial intermediaries, with a significant presence in many regions, particularly the United States and Southeast Asia. In addition to being among the world's largest banks, they have some of the world's largest problems. Recent studies have...

Evidence of an operative credit channel has been inconclusive. The inability to clearly distinguish the effects of shocks to loan supply from those to loan demand has made it difficult to quantify the importance of this transmission mechanism to the economy. This paper provides an innovative...

One of the more dramatic financial events of the late 1980s and early 1990s was the surge in Japanese stock prices that was immediately followed by a very sharp decline of more than 50 percent. While the unprecedented fluctuations in Japanese stock prices were domestic financial shocks, the...