Despite a large and growing theoretical literature on flights to safety, there does not appear to exist an empirical characterization of flight-to-safety (FTS) episodes. Using only data on bond and stock returns, we identify and characterize flight to safety episodes for 23 countries. On...

Financial intermediaries often provide guarantees that resemble out-of-the-money put options, exposing them to tail risk. Using the U.S. life insurance industry as a laboratory, we present a model in which variable annuity (VA) guarantees and associated hedging operate within the regulatory...

Despite a large and growing theoretical literature on flights to safety, there does not appear to exist an empirical characterization of flight-to-safety (FTS) episodes. Using only data on bond and stock returns, we identify and characterize flight to safety episodes for 23 countries. On...

A healthy financial system encourages the efficient allocation of capital and risk. The collapse of the house price bubble led to the financial crisis that started in 2007. There is a large empirical literature concerning the relation between asset price bubbles and financial crises. I evaluate...

This interdisciplinary paper explains how mathematical techniques of stochastic optimal control can be applied to the recent subprime mortgage crisis. Why did the financial markets fail to anticipate the recent debt crisis, despite the large literature in mathematical finance concerning optimal...

Alan Greenspan’s paper (March 2010) presents his retrospective view of the crisis. His theme has several parts. First, the housing price bubble, its subsequent collapse and the financial crisis were not predicted either by the market, the FED, the IMF or the regulators in the years leading to...

This interdisciplinary paper explains how mathematical techniques of stochastic optimal control can be applied to the recent subprime mortgage crisis. Why did the financial markets fail to anticipate the recent debt crisis, despite the large literature in mathematical finance concerning optimal...

We apply causality extraction (CE) algorithms on more than 36,000 articles from 2 major financial newspapers (WSJ, FT) and three major newswires (DJ, MNI Market News, Reuters) over the extended period 1980-2020 to shed light on the fundamental triggers of flights to safety. Our CE algorithm...

We examine the relation between bank risk management procedures and sales of mortgages during the financial crisis of 2007-2009. Research suggests that banks employing an originate-to-distribute strategy devoted little effort to screening, thereby diminishing their ability to sell loans during...

This paper provides a first step in developing a system-wide stress simulation. The model incorporates several important features of the financial system. These include several types of institution (including banks and non-banks) and how their actions may propagate and amplify stress. Rather...