Can a wealth shift to emerging countries explain instability in developed countries? Investors exposed to political risk seek safety in countries with better property right protection. This induces private intermediaries to offer safety via inexpensive demandable debt, and increase lending into...

We explore the relationship between asset encumbrance and bank funding in the context of covered bonds a form of collateralized debt. Covered bond issuance influences the incidence of bank runs by unsecured creditors and, in turn, conditions in the unsecured funding market influence the bank s...

We propose a novel theory of financial contagion. We study global coordination games of regime change in two regions with an initially uncertain correlation of regional fundamentals. A crisis in region 1 is a wake-up call to investors in region 2 that induces a reassessment of local...

How does asset encumbrance affect the fragility of intermediaries subject to rollover risk? We offer a model in which a bank issues covered bonds backed by a pool of assets that is bankruptcy remote and replenished following losses. Encumbering assets allows a bank to raise cheap secured debt...

We model the asset-opacity choice of an intermediary subject to rollover risk in wholesale funding markets. Greater opacity means investors form more dispersed beliefs about an intermediary's profitability. The endogenous benefit of opacity is lower fragility when profitability is expected to be...

I study rollover risk in the wholesale funding market when intermediaries can hold liquidity ex-ante and are subject to fire sales ex-post. I demonstrate that precautionary liquidity restores multiple equilibria in a global rollover game. An intermediate liquidity level supports both the usual...

We propose a model of asset encumbrance by banks subject to rollover risk and study the consequences for fragility, funding costs, and prudential regulation. A bank's choice of encumbrance trades off the benefit of expanding profitable investment funded by cheap long-term secured debt against...

The scale of safe assets suggests a structural demand for a safe wealth share beyond transaction and liquidity roles. We study how investors achieve a reference wealth level by combining self-insurance and contingent liquidation of investment. Intermediaries improve upon autarky, insuring...

We present a simple model to study the risk sensitivity of capital regulation. A banker funds investment with uninsured deposits and costly capital, where capital resolves a moral hazard problem in the banker's choice of risk. Investors are uninformed about investment quality, but a regulator...

Can macroprudential foreign exchange (FX) regulations on banks reduce the financial and macroeconomic vulnerabilities created by borrowing in foreign currency? To evaluate the effectiveness and unintended consequences of macroprudential FX regulations, we develop a parsimonious model of bank and...