This paper studies the effects of changes in uncertainty on optimal leverage and investment in a dynamic firm-financing model in which firms have access to complete markets subject to collateral constraints. Entrepreneurs finance projects with their net worth and by issuing state-contingent...

This paper investigates how cross-sectional micro-uncertainty influences the investment of small and large firms and discusses the aggregate implications of the heterogeneity in their investment decisions. Empirically, we find that large firms show less investment decline in times of heightened...

This paper studies the macroeconomic effects of shocks to idiosyncratic business risk in an economy with endogenously incomplete markets. I develop a model in which firms face idiosyncratic risk and obtain insurance from intermediaries through contracts akin to credit lines. Insurance is...

Internal capital markets (ICMs) allow multinational enterprises (MNEs) to transfer liquidity globally, which connects external capital markets when the related entities also raise external funds. This paper studies such connection with a model of ICMs that permits two layers of agency problems:...

We study the macroeconomic consequences of financial market concentration in a complete markets economy with production. We propose a theory in which differences in preferences, productivity, and risk exposure generate gains from trade, but these gains are not fully realized because some large...

The interest rate is generally considered as an important driver of macroeconomic investment. As an innovation, this paper derives the exact shape of the "hysteretic" impact of changes in the interest rate on macroeconomic investment under the scenarios of both certainty and uncertainty. We...

What matters to economic decision-making is whether the economy has become more or less predictable. People and businesses use information around them to form judgements about what might happen in the future. The rise in uncertainty might be associated with increased concern about extreme...

With more than $50 trillion in assets worldwide, investment funds run by the insurance industry and pension system are one of the most systemically important elements of the global financial system. In March 2014, following the global and euro area financial and economic crises, the European...

We augment a standard monetary DSGE model to include a banking sector and financial markets. We fit the model to Euro Area and US data. We find that agency problems in financial contracts, liquidity constraints facing banks and shocks that alter the perception of market risk and hit financial...

Following spikes in aggregate uncertainty, firm-level physical capital drops along with large liquidity buildup and deleveraging. Conventional macro-finance models treating corporate cash holding as net debt fail to capture the observed liquidity buildup when reproducing deleveraging, leaving an...