What caused the financial crisis -- What prolonged the crisis -- Why the crisis worsened dramatically a year after it began -- What went right in the two decades before the crisis -- Why a black swan landed in the money market in August 2007

"At the center of the financial market crisis of 2007-2008 was a highly unusual jump in spreads between the overnight inter-bank lending rate and term London inter-bank offer rates (Libor). Because many private loans are linked to Libor rates, the sharp increase in these spreads raised the cost...

Recently there has been an explosion of research on whether the equilibrium real interest rate has declined, an issue with significant implications for monetary policy. A common finding is that the rate has declined. In this paper we provide evidence that contradicts this finding. We show that...

In this paper we investigate the comparative properties of empirically-estimated monetary models of the US economy using a new database of models designed for such investigations. We focus on three representative models due to Christiano, Eichenbaum, Evans (2005), Smets and Wouters (2007) and...