I analyze efficient government interventions to mitigate financial distress during a severe macroeconomic downturn. At the macroeconomic level, the key variable is the gap between the real wage and the shadow cost of labor. This gap is large when unemployment is high. At the micro level,...

For developed market economies, the corona crisis is a new type of crisis, but this crisis has parallels to economies at other times, and to crises at other places. We discuss some mechanisms from the traditional macro literature, and from the literature on macroeconomics for developing...

I analyze efficient government interventions to mitigate financial distress during a severe macroeconomic downturn. At the macroeconomic level, the key variable is the gap between the real wage and the shadow cost of labor. This gap is large when unemployment is high. At the micro level,...