This paper proposes a model that links households and firms, as usual, by markets forfactors and goods and, additionally, by a banking sector that channels households’funds to firms and eliminates idiosyncratic risk. In equilibrium, agency costs and taxbenefits of corporate debt are equalizing...

Government-nanced bank restructuring programs, occasionally costing up to 50% of GDP,are commonly used to resolve banking crises. We analyze the Ramsey-optimal paths of bankrecapitalization programs that weigh recapitalization benets and costs under dierent nancingoptions. In our model bank...

We consider the effects of an imperfectly competitive banking sector on the capital stock in a version of the two-period Diamond OLG model, focusing on how profits are returned. There are two broad alternatives: profits may be taxed and returned to households exogenously as fiscal transfers or...

This paper examines monetary policy in a currency union whose member countries exhibitheterogeneous rates of limited asset markets participation (LAMP). As a result risksharing among member countries is imperfect and the monetary transmission mechanismcan dier across countries. In the limit the...

The recent crisis was characterized by massive illiquidity. This paper reviews what we know and don't know about illiquidity and all its friends: market freezes, fire sales, contagion, and ultimately insolvencies and bailouts. It first explains why liquidity cannot easily be apprehended through...

A central proposition in research on the role that banks play in the transmission mechanism is that monetary policy imparts a direct impact on deposits and that deposits, insofar as they constitute the supply of loanable funds, act as the driving force of bank lending. This paper argues that the...

This paper addresses the relevance of the bank lending channel in the transmission of monetary policy in Germany on the basis of a structural vector error correction model (VECM). In order to deal with the fundamental problem of identification we use restriction tests on cointegration vectors to...

Central banks, which used to be so secretive, are communicating more and more these days about their monetary policy. This development has proceeded hand in glove with a burgeoning new scholarly literature on the subject. The empirical evidence, reviewed selectively here, suggests that...

Few areas of monetary economics have been studied as extensively as the transmission mechanism. The literature on this topic has evolved substantially over the years, following the waxing and waning of conceptual frameworks and the changing characteristics of the financial system. In this paper,...

This paper investigates the effect of interest rate policy on stock marketbubbles and trading behavior in experimental asset markets. For this purpose, weintroduce the possibility of investing in interest bearing bonds to the classicallaboratory asset market design of Smith, Suchanek, and...