The confluence of three trends in the U.S. residential housing market - rising home prices, declining interest rates, and near-frictionless refinancing opportunities - led to vastly increased systemic risk in the financial system. Individually, each of these trends is benign, but when they occur...

Guarantees of financial contracts, such as loans, deposit insurance, and swaps, pervade the financial system and play an important role in corporate and public finance. This paper develops a framework for analyzing the efficient management of such guarantees in both the private and public...