Motivated by the apparent failure of the credit multiplier mechanism (CM) to deliver amplification in DSGE models, we re-examine its role in business cycles to address the question: is something wrong with the CM? Our answer is no. In coming to this answer we construct a model with reproducible...

We analyze optimal monetary policy and its implications for asset prices, when aggregate demand has inertia and responds to asset prices with a lag. If there is a negative output gap, the central bank optimally overshoots aggregate asset prices (asset prices are initially pushed above their...

This paper builds models of nonlinear dynamics in the aggregate investment and borrower net worth to study the causes and nature of endogenous credit cycles. The basic model has two types of projects: the Good and the Bad. The Good projects rely on the inputs supplied by others who could...

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...

Capital gains play an important, positive role in the inter-temporal allocation of resources, but they can also be a source of economic instability. We analyze a simple overlapping-generations economy with capital goods and irreversible investment. For each vector of initial capital/labor...

The interest rate at which US firms borrow funds has two features: (i) it moves in a countercyclical fashion and (ii) it is an inverted leading indicator of real economic activity: low interest rates forecast booms in GDP, consumption, investment, and employment. We show that a Kiyotaki-Moore...

I review the literature on financial speculation driven by belief disagreements from a macroeconomics perspective. To highlight unifying themes, I develop a stylized macroeconomic model that embeds several mechanisms. With short-selling constraints, speculation can generate overvaluation and...

This paper stresses a new channel through which global financial linkages contribute to the co-movement in economic activity across countries. We show in a two-country setting with borrowing constraints that international credit markets are subject to self-fulfilling variations in the world real...

I construct an infinite-horizon dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with a collateral constraint and actual default in equilibrium. Entrepreneurs borrow from households through non-recourse debt contracts backed by capital goods. By taking into account the non-linear payoffs of the...