To measure the global spillovers of a Chinese slowdown on the long-term nominal interest rates in the US/Germany, I model the US/German nominal term structure jointly in the post financial crisis (FC) sample, including the Chinese leading indicator as a new factor. I use an affine term structure...

This paper examines return predictability when the investor is uncertain about the right state variables. A novel feature of the model averaging approach used in this paper is to account for finite-sample bias of the coefficients in the predictive regressions. Drawing on an extensive...

Using a unique dataset of the Euro area and the U.S. bank lending standards, we find that low (monetary policy) short-term interest rates soften standards, for household and corporate loans. This softening – especially for mortgages – is amplified by securitization activity, weak supervision...

This paper offers a simple theory of inefficiently lax financial regulation arising as an outcome of a democratic political process. Lax financial regulation encourages some banks to issue risky residential mortgages. In the event of an adverse aggregate housing shock, these banks fail. When...

We examine the role of U.S. monetary policy in global financial stability by using a cross-country database spanning the period from 1870-2010 across 69 countries. U.S. monetary policy tightening increases the probability of banking crises for those countries with direct linkages to the U.S.,...

The seeds for the 2007-09 financial collapse were sewn over many years and nurtured by ill-advised governmental housing policy, the presence of pervasive fraud both large and small and the widespread failure of personal integrity. A chronology of bad choices made by individuals and the...

This paper examines transmission of shocks between the U.S. and foreign markets to delineate interdependence from contagion of the U.S. financial crisis by constructing shock models for partially-overlapping and non-overlapping markets. There exists important bi-directional, yet asymmetric,...

This paper examines the contagion effects of the U.S. subprime crisis on international stock markets using a DCC-GARCH model on 38 country data. We find evidence of financial contagion not only in emerging markets but also in developed markets during the U.S. subprime crisis. We also find...

We study the effects of short- and longer-term U.S. interest rates on risk taking in the global market for U.S. dollar syndicated term loans. Because banks tend to originate these loans with intent to sell to non-bank investors, we examine risk taking by the broad financial system. To the extent...