We study a dynamic, decentralized lemons market with one-time entry and characterize its set of equilibria. Our framework offers a theory of how “frozen” markets suffering from adverse selection recover or “thaw” over time endogenously; given an initial fraction of lemons, our model...

A growing recent theoretical literature advocates the use of prudential capital control policy, that is, the tightening of restrictions on cross-border capital flows during booms and the relaxation thereof during recessions. We examine the behavior of capital controls in a large number of...

Building on the empirical studies and financial crises theories, a general framework describing the mechanisms of crisis formation and transmission is developed. Factors of crisis formation include external and internal imbalances, shocks, deficiencies of economic policies and changes in the...

This article considers factors and conditions slowing growth of the Russian economy. Its recovery growth after the crisis of 2008—2009 is over. The limit of rapid growth through the export of raw materials has now been reached. Reducing flows of financial resources from the rest of the world...

One measure of the health of the Social Security system is the difference between the market value of the trust fund and the present value of benefits accrued to date. How should present values be computed for this calculation in light of future uncertainties? We think it is important to use...

We identify a novel, fiscal hedging motive that helps to explain why governments issue more expensive, long-term debt. We analyze optimal fiscal policy in an economy with distortionary labor income taxes, nominal rigidities and nominal debt of various maturities. The government in our model can...

This paper studies Pareto-optimal risk-sharing arrangements in a private information economy with aggregate uncertainty and ex ante heterogeneous agents. I show how to implement Pareto-optima as equilibria when agents can trade claims to consumption contingent on aggregate shocks in financial...

The recent financial crisis was an accident, a “perfect storm” fueled by an unforeseeable confluence of events that unfortunately combined to bring down the global financial systems. And policy makers? They did everything they could, given their limited authority. It was all a terrible,...

Following the global financial crisis, many countries have embarked on fundamental reviews of their regulatory systems in an attempt to identify the causes of the near collapse in financial systems and to pave the way for a new approach to regulation. The focus of this paper concerns the...