This paper studies predatory trading: trading that induces and/or exploits other investors' need to reduce their positions. We show that if one trader needs to sell, others also sell and subsequently buy back the asset. This leads to price overshooting and a reduced liquidation value for the...

This paper introduces a tractable, structural model of subjective beliefs. Forward-looking agents care about expected future utility flows, and hence have higher current felicity if they believe that better outcomes are more likely. On the other hand, biased expectations lead to poorer decisions...

China's gradualistic approach allowed the government to learn how the economy reacts to small policy changes, and to adjust its reforms before implementing them in full. With fully developed financial markets, however, private actors' may front-run future policy changes making it impossible for...

A theory of money needs a proper place for financial intermediaries. Intermediaries diversify risks and create inside money. In downturns, micro-prudent intermediaries shrink their lending activity, fire-sell assets and supply less inside money, exactly when money demand rises. The resulting...

This paper puts forward a teaching manual for how to set up and solve a continuous time model that allows one to analyze endogenous (1) level and risk dynamics. The latter includes (2) tail risk and crisis probability as well as (3) the Volatility Paradox. Concepts such as (4) illiquidity and...

In our incomplete markets economy financial frictions affect the optimal inflation target. Households choose portfolios consisting of risky (uninsurable) capital and money. Money is a bubbly store of value. The market outcome is constrained Pareto inefficient due to a pecuniary externality. Each...

We propose a simple model of the sovereign-bank diabolic loop, and establish four results. First, the diabolic loop can be avoided by restricting banks domestic sovereign exposures relative to their equity. Second, equity requirements can be lowered if banks only hold senior domestic sovereign...

This paper develops a dynamic two-country neoclassical stochastic growth model with incomplete markets. Short-term credit flows can be excessive and reverse suddenly. The equilibrium outcome is constrained inefficient due to pecuniary externalities. First, an undercapitalized country borrows too...

This paper proposes a welfare criterion for economies in which agents have heterogeneously distorted beliefs. Instead of taking a stand on whose belief is correct, our criterion asserts that an allocation is belief-neutral efficient (inefficient) if it is efficient (inefficient) under any convex...

Financial institutions may be vulnerable to predatory short selling. When the stock of a financial institution is shorted aggressively, leverage constraints imposed by short-term creditors can force the institution to liquidate long-term investments at fire sale prices. For financial...