The cross-country interbank market in the euro area was a crucial transmission channel of financial stress. By using a two-country DSGE model of a financially heterogeneous monetary union where banks in one country lend funds to their foreign counterparts, I examine its role as shock ampli.er...

The literature on optimal fiscal policy finds that highly volatile real returns on government debt, for example through surprise inflation, have very low costs. However, policymakers are almost always very apprehensive of this option. The paper discusses evidence concerning features of...

This paper analyzes the impact of public debt on financial efficiency in an overlapping-generations model. We argue that public debt may reduce intermediation costs by increasing the collateral of entrepreneurs. This effect is stronger, the stronger the non-Ricardian component of public debt,...

The literature on optimal fiscal policy finds that highly volatile real returns on government debt, for example through surprise inflation, have very low costs. However, policymakers are almost always very apprehensive of this option. The paper discusses evidence concerning features of...

"We explore a view of the crisis as a shock to investor sentiment that led to the collapse of a bubble or pyramid scheme in financial markets. We embed this view in a standard model of the financial accelerator and explore its empirical and policy implications. In particular, we show how the...