A salient feature of the recent U.S. recession is that output and employment have declined more in regions (states, counties) where household leverage had increased more during the credit boom. This pattern is difficult to explain with standard models of financing frictions. We propose a theory...

Financial intermediation arises from the need for expertise in channeling capital from savers to borrowers in the presence of transaction costs. I present a framework for measuring the overall efficiency of financial intermediation and emphasize some key challenges in applying benefit-cost...

We study a model where households use home equity to finance consumption expenditures and we analyze the macroeconomic consequences of a credit crunch triggered by tightening lending standards.

The search for the optimal, or value-maximizing, capital structure involves weighing the expected benefits of higher leverage against the expected "costs of financial distress." These costs include not only the direct costs of reorganization, but less quantifiable effects of financial trouble...

Using firm-, industry-, and country-level data, we document a link between family ownership and labour relations. Across countries, we find that family ownership is relatively more prevalent in countries in which labour relations are difficult, consistent with firm-level evidence suggesting that...

We use longitudinal individual wage and employment data in France and the United States to investigate the effect of changes in the real minimum wage rate on an individual’s employment status. We focus on workers employed at wages close enough to the minimum in a reference year as to be...

A quantitative investigation of financial intermediation in the U.S. over the past 130 years yields the following results : (i) the finance industry’s share of GDP is high in the 1920s, low in the 1950s and 1960s, and high again in the 1990s and 2000s; (ii) most of these variations can be...

We provide a first comprehensive account of the dynamics of Eurozone countries from the creation of the Euro to the Great recession. We model each country as an open economy within a monetary union and analyze the dynamics of private leverage, fiscal policy and spreads. Our parsimonious model...