Credit constraints that link a private agent's debt to market-determined prices create a systemic credit externality that drives a wedge between competitive and (constrained) socially optimal equilibria, which induces private agents to "overborrow". We quantify the effects of this externality in...

Housing markets and their cycles are central to understanding macroeconomic fluctuations. As housing is an inherently spatial market, an understanding of the economics of location-specific amenities is needed. This paper examines this topic, using a rich dataset of over 1.2 million sales and...

We consider how fear of model misspecification on the part of the planner and/or the households affects welfare gains from optimal macroprudential taxes in an economy with occasionally binding collateral constraints as in Bianchi (2011). On the one hand, there exist welfare gains from...

We build a variation of the neoclassical growth model in which financial shocks to households or wealth shocks (in the sense of wealth destruction) generate recessions. Two standard ingredients that are necessary are (1) the existence of adjustment costs that make the expansion of the tradable...

Business cycles are oscillations in the economy because of recessions and expansions. In this paper we investigate the oscillation of the gross domestic product as a result of its relations with the other main macroeconomic variables such as capital, consumption, and investment.There is a...

Business cycles are oscillations in economy because of recessions and expansions. In this paper we investigate the oscillation of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a result of its relations with the other main macroeconomic variables such as capital, consumption and investment. There is a...

We analyze the impact of interest rate policy on financial stability in an environment where banks can experience runs on their short-term liabilities, forcing them to sell assets at fire-sale prices. Price adjustment frictions and a state-dependent risk of financial crisis create the...

The financial sector bailouts seen during the Great Recession generated substantial opposition and controversy. We assess the welfare benefits of government-funded emergency support to the financial sector, taking into account its effects on risk-taking incentives. In our quantitative general...

Short-term collateralized debt, such as demand deposits and money market instruments - private money, is efficient if agents are willing to lend without producing costly information about the collateral backing the debt. When the economy relies on such informationally-insensitive debt, firms...

The global fall in interest rates in recent decades has raised the possibility of a negative natural rate of interest. The secular stagnation hypothesis argues that a negative natural rate of interest is the underlying cause of the Great Recession. In this paper I demonstrate the role of bubbles...