Banks produce short-term debt for transactions and storing value. The value of bank money must not vary over time so agents can easily trade this debt at par. This requires that no agent finds it profitable to produce costly private information about the bank's loans. To produce safe liquidity...

Banks are optimally opaque institutions. They produce debt for use as a transaction medium (bank money), which requires that information about the backing assets - loans - not be revealed, so that bank money does not fluctuate in value, reducing the efficiency of trade. This need for opacity...

"After the Great Depression John Maynard Keynes led the way in building a new macroeconomic framework to deal with that unprecedented economic reality. Ten years after our own crisis, however, macroeconomics has not come to terms with how to grapple with the idea of financial crises in its...

Reputation concerns in credit markets restrain borrowers' temptations to take excessive risk. The strength of these concerns depends on the behavior of other borrowers, rendering the reputational discipline fragile and subject to breakdowns without obvious changes in economic fundamentals....