Laws governing the foreclosure process can have direct consequences on the costs of foreclosure and could therefore affect lending decisions. We exploit the heterogeneity in the judicial requirements across U.S. states to examine their impact on banks’ lending decisions in a sample of urban...

This paper addresses the complex and overlooked relationship between the receipt of workers'' remittances and institutional quality in the recipient country. Using a simple model, we show how an increase in remittance inflows can lead to deterioration of institutional quality - specifically, to...

We use a calibrated multi-sector DSGE model to analyze the likely impact of oil windfalls on the Ghanaian economy, under alternative fiscal and monetary policy responses. We distinguish between the short-run impact, associated with demand-related pressures, and the medium run impact on...

We examine the impact of banks’ exposure to market liquidity shocks through wholesale funding on their supply of credit during the financial crisis in the United States. We focus on mortgage lending to minimize the impact of confounding demand factors that could potentially be large when...

We show that the lightly regulated non-bank mortgage originators contributed disproportionately to the recent boom-bust housing cycle. Using comprehensive data on mortgage originations, which we aggregate at the county level, we first establish that the market share of these independent non-bank...

The appropriate level of bank capital and, more generally, a bank's capacity to absorb losses, has been at the core of the post-crisis policy debate. This paper contributes to the debate by focusing on how much capital would have been needed to avoid imposing losses on bank creditors or...

Financial crises are traditionally analyzed as purely economic phenomena. The political economy of financial booms and busts remains both under-emphasized and limited to isolated episodes. This paper examines the political economy of financial policy during ten of the most infamous financial...