Due to the significant share of mortgage loans in the portfolio structure of a large number of commercial banks, monitoring the ability of the household sector to repay debts is very important for financial stability. Since the accumulation of non-performing loans in banks' balance sheets is...

While some credit booms are followed by economic underperformance, many are not. Can lending standards help separate good credit booms from bad credit booms contemporaneously? To observe lending standards internationally, I use information from primary debt capital markets. I construct the...

The financial crisis introduced a new phrase into the banking industry's lexicon - "too big to fail." "Too big to fail" describes financial institutions so important to the financial markets that their collapse or bankruptcy would disrupt the capital markets in such catastrophic ways that it...

We estimate the effects of monetary policy on price-setting behavior in administrative micro data underlying the German producer price index. We find a strong degree of monetary nonneutrality. After expansionary monetary policy, the mass of additional price adjustments is economically small and...

Cash holdings at the onset of a financial crisis are a key determinant of investment by SMEs not only during the crisis but also during the recovery period. Cash-rich SMEs could maintain their capital stock during the global financial crisis, while cash-poor rivals reduced theirs. This gave...

We study the role of firm heterogeneity in affecting business cycle dynamics and optimal stabilization policy. Firms differ in their degree of cyclicality, and hence, exposure to aggregate risk, leading to firm-specific risk premia that influence resource allocations. The heterogeneous firm...

We develop a new theory of information production during credit booms. In our model, entrepreneurs need credit to undertake investment projects, some of which enable them to divert resources towards private consumption. Lenders can protect themselves from such diversion in two ways:...

The financial crisis of 200709 has highlighted the importance of developments in financial conditions for real economic activity. The authors estimate the effect of current and past shocks to financial variables on U.S. GDP growth by constructing two growthbased financial conditions indexes...