This study analyzes the trends in the financial sector over the past 30 years, and argues that unsupervised financial innovations and lenient government regulation are at the root of the current financial crisis and recession. Combined with a long period of economic expansion during which...

Spain has experienced many financial crises through its history. These financial crises have varied origins. However, they do have common threads. The current recession and subsequent debt crisis follow the same pattern. The fiscal and monetary policies of the Spanish government have played a...

I analyze the impact of raising capital requirements on the quantity, composition, and riskiness of aggregate investment in a model in which firms borrow from both bank and non-bank lenders. The bank funds loans with insured deposits and costly equity, monitors borrowers, and must maintain a...

It is well known fact that all good things, as also bad things, come to an end and business cycles pass through good and bad economic times. Economically 2010 was a year of transition from economic recession to recovery. Economies were improving in some countries and industries were showing...

In the past the first expenditure to be cut during an economic downturn was capital expenditure. However, the cuts in capital expenditure of the late 1980’s and 90’s had left Ireland with an infrastructure deficit. This note highlights a number of important issues, which should be considered...

The author evaluates the effect of the Bank of Canada's conditional commitment regarding the target overnight rate on longer-term market interest rates by taking into account the relationship between interest rates, inflation, and unemployment rates. By using vector autoregressive models of...

Debt levels have surged since the mid-1990s and have reached historic highs across the OECD. High debt levels can create vulnerabilities, which amplify and transmit macroeconomic and asset price shocks. Furthermore, high debt levels hinder the ability of households and enterprises to smooth...

In this paper, we develop a financial stress index for France that can be used as a real-time composite indicator for the state of financial stability in France. We take 17 financial variables from different market segments and extract a common stress component using a dynamic approximate factor...

Data show that sovereign risk reduces liquidity, increases funding cost and risk of banks highly exposed to it. I build a model that rationalizes this fact. Banks act as delegated monitors and invest in risky projects and in risky sovereign bonds. As investors hear rumors of increased sovereign...

The financial crisis 2008-2009 and the European sovereign debt crisis have shown that stress on financial markets is important for analyzing and forecasting economic activity. Since financial stress is not directly observable but is presumably reflected in many financial market variables, it is...