Doubts about the accuracy with which outside investors can assess a banking firm’s value motivate many government interventions in the banking market. The recent financial crisis has reinforced concerns about the possibility that banks are unusually opaque. Yet the empirical evidence, thus...

This paper studies the role of leverage in the business cycle. Based on a study of nearly 200 recession episodes in 14 advanced countries between 1870 and 2008, we document a new stylized fact of the modern business cycle: more credit-intensive booms tend to be followed by deeper recessions and...

Speech to UCLA Symposium at UC Berkeley, Berkeley, California, October 30, 2008

Presentation to the Commonwealth Club of California, San Francisco CA, June 30, 2009

To understand Fed policy at this point, you have to look at this whole picture. We have good GDP growth, but a yawning shortfall of employment and output from potential levels. ; Presentation to the Chicago Booth Graduate School of Business Alumni Club of San Francisco, San Francisco, Ca,...

Speech to the Silicon Valley Chapter of Financial Executives International, Palo Alto, California, October 14, 2008.

Speech to the Asia Society of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, February 6, 2007

We argue that, through its effect on aggregate demand and country risk premia, sovereign debt restructuring can adversely affect the private sector's access to foreign capital markets. Using fixed effect analysis, we estimate that sovereign debt rescheduling episodes are indeed systematically...

Currency crises of the past decade highlighted the importance of balance-sheet effects of currency crises. In credit-constrained markets such effects may lead to further declines in credit. Controlling for a host of fundamentals, we find a systematic decline in foreign credit to emerging market...

This paper introduces a model of international lender of last resort (ILLR) activity under asymmetric information. The ILLR is unable to distinguish between runs due to debtor insolvency and those which are the result of pure sunspots. Nevertheless, the ILLR can elicit the underlying state of...