This paper argues that counter-cyclical liquidity hoarding by financial intermediaries may strongly amplify business cycles. It develops a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model in which banks operate subject to agency problems and funding liquidity risk in their inter- mediation activity....

Recent years have witnessed a revival of interest in the Great Depression of the 1930s. Among the differing new interpretations, the real business cycle (RBC) approach is particularly significant. It represents an outstanding methodological innovation in trying to cast the Great Depression...

Presents the empirical data of business cycles and the theories that economists have developed to explain and prevent them, and considers case studies of recessions and depressions in the United States and internationally.