During the ongoing financial crisis the analysis of similar historical crises has gained more and more attention among economic researchers and forecasters. Existing studies, however, do not tackle the immense heterogeneity that is present in cross-country samples in a formal and consistent way....

This paper investigates in a non-linear setting the impact on the real economy of frictions stemming from the financial sector. We develop a medium scale DSGE model with a banking sector where an occasionally binding constraint on banks’ capital induces a relevant non-linearity. The model -...

Economic policies shape how much people earn as well as how stable their income and jobs are. The level and stability of earnings both matter for well-being. Standard economic aggregates do not measure accurately the economic uncertainty which households are facing. This paper shows that...

We investigate whether the shape of relations between banks and firms has had a detectable effect in mitigating the credit contraction that followed Lehman's default in September 2008. Using micro data on a large sample of Italian firms, we analyze the relation between firms' debt concentration...

We develop an agent-based model for the euro area that fulfils widely recommended requirements for nextgeneration macroeconomic models by i) incorporating financial frictions, ii) relaxing the requirement of rational expectations, and iii) including heterogeneous agents. Using macroeconomic and...