Shocks to bank lending, risk-taking and securitization activities that are orthogonal to real economy and monetary policy innovations account for more than 30 percent of U.S. output variation. The dynamic effects, however, depend on the type of shock. Expansionary securitization shocks lead to a...

Ongoing financial innovation and greater information availability increase the tradability of bank assets and reduce banks' dependence on individual bank managers as private information in the lending process declines. In this paper we argue that this has two effects on banks, with opposing...