We introduce a simple equilibrium model of a market for loans. Households lend to firms and form expectations about their loan default probability. Under heterogeneous expectations, with switching between forecasting strategies driven by reinforcement learning, even a small fraction of...

Why do advanced economies fall into prolonged periods of economic stagnation, particularly in the aftermath of credit booms? We present a model of persistent aggregate demand shortage based on strong liquidity preferences of households, in which we incorporate financial imperfections to study...

We experimentally investigate how price expectations are formed in a large asset market where subjects' only task is to forecast the future price of a risky asset. The realized prices depend on these expectations. We observe small (6 participants) and large markets (about 100 participants). In...

A number of previous studies have looked at the effect of financial crises on actual output several years beyond the crisis. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the growth of potential output also is affected by recessions, whether or not they include financial crises. Trend per...

During the recovery from the recent crisis, the general role of lending in economic growth, and particularly in the recovery from financial crises, has become an important issue. In this paper, we review the major differences between creditless recovery episodes and recoveries accompanied by...

We analyze whether mid-level managers in securitized finance were aware of a large-scale housing bubble and a looming crisis in 2004-2006 using their personal home transaction data. We find that the average person in our sample neither timed the market nor were cautious in their home...

We analyze whether mid-level managers in securitized finance were aware of the housing bubble and a looming crisis in 2004-2006 using their personal home transaction data. To the extent that the practice of securitization may have led to lax screening of subprime borrowers, we find that the...