The paper examines three aspects of a financial crisis of domestic origin. The first section studies the evolution of a debt-financed consumption boom supported by rising asset prices, leading to a credit crunch and fluctuations in the real economy, and, ultimately, to debt deflation. The next...

This paper uncovers a novel mechanism by which bubbles crowd in capital investment. If capital is initially depressed by a binding credit constraint, injecting a bubble triggers a savings glut. Higher returns in a new bubbly equilibrium attract additional investors who expand investment at the...

This paper uncovers a novel mechanism by which bubbles crowd in capital investment. If capital is initially depressed by a binding credit constraint, injecting a bubble triggers a savings glut. Higher returns in a new bubbly equilibrium attract additional investors who expand investment at the...

Investment booms and asset "bubbles" are often the consequence of heavily leveraged borrowing and speculations of persistent growth in asset demand. We show theoretically that dynamic interactions between elastic credit supply (due to leveraged borrowing) and persistent credit demand (due to...

Why are asset prices so much more volatile and so often detached from their fundamental values? Why does the bursting of financial bubbles depress the real economy? This paper addresses these questions by constructing an infinite-horizon heterogeneous agent general equilibrium model with...

Can shifts in the credit supply generate a boom-bust cycle similar to the one observed in the US around 2008? To answer this question, we develop a general equilibrium model that combines a rich heterogeneous agent overlapping-generations structure of households who make housing tenure decisions...

The paper examines three aspects of a financial crisis of domestic origin. The first section studies the evolution of a debt-financed consumption boom supported by rising asset prices, leading to a credit crunch and fluctuations in the real economy, and, ultimately, to debt deflation. The next...

Borrowing decisions affect most households, with large stakes and implications for subfields as varied as macroeconomics and industrial organization. I review theoretical and empirical work on household debt: its prevalence, level, growth, and composition, as well as various measures of consumer...

We study quantitatively how far shifts in the credit supply can generate a boom-bust cycle, similar to the one observed in the US around 2008. For this purpose, we develop a general equilibrium model that combines a rich heterogeneous agent overlapping-generations structure of households who...

Mortgage refinancing activity associated with extraction of home equity contains a strongly counter-cyclical component consistent with household demand for liquidity. We estimate a structural model of liquidity management featuring counter-cyclical idiosyncratic labor income uncertainty, both...