The aggregate production function is at the center of contemporaneous macroeconomics. Both growth and business cycle theories offer predictions that depend on the specification of the aggregate technology. In this paper I postulate that the specification of the aggregate technology is endogenous...

The success of deposit insurance arrangements at eliminating bank runs is likely closely tied to their credibility. We investigate this hypothesis building on two episodes which tested the insurance protection offered by the Portuguese arrangement in the midst of the country's sovereign debt...

When banks are hit by a severe liquidity shock, central banks have a key role as lenders of last resort. Despite the well-established importance of this mechanism, it is challenging to analyze empirically this key role of central banks. We explore a unique setting in which banks suddenly lost...

We study local loan conditions when, under external pressure, banks close branches. After the closure of nearby branches of their credit granting banks, firms that locally and hurriedly transfer to other banks receive an equivalent interest rate. However, and in stark contrast, where branch...

Banking crises are rare events, however when they occur they often have dramatic consequences. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the toolkit of early warning models available to policy makers by exploring the dynamics and non-linearities embedded in a panel dataset covering several...

In this paper we explore the process of convergence to firms' target leverage ratios. Using a unique dataset of micro, small, medium and large firms, we find that this process is very fast, most notably for smaller firms. We further explore these results by analyzing different convergence...