When the monetary policy rate increases, banks increase loan rates fairly quickly and by roughly the same amount. However, when the policy rate falls, bank loan rates adjust more slowly and not completely. I develop a model with which I show that this asymmetry in interest rate pass-through can...

Consumption risk sharing among U.S. federal states increases in booms and decreases in recessions. We find that small firms' access to credit markets plays an important role in explaining this stylized fact: business cycle fluctuations in aggregate risk sharing are more pronounced in states in...

Using count data on the number of bank failures in US states during the 1960 to 2006 period, this paper endeavors to establish how far sources of economic risk (recessions, high interest rates, inflation) or differences in solvency and branching regulation can explain some of the fragility in...