In this paper we investigate the main features of the Italian financial cycle, extracted by means of a structural trend-cycle decomposition of the credit-to-GDP ratio, using annual observations from 1861 to 2011. In order to draw conclusions based on solid historical data, we provide a thorough...

This paper studies the efficiency of financial intermediation through securitization with asymmetric information about the quality of securitized loans. In this theoretical model, I show that, in general, by providing reputation-based implicit recourse, the issuer of a loan can credibly signal...

A large-scale model of the global economy is used to investigate the structural determinants of the Great Moderation and the transition to the Great Recession (1986-2010). Beside the global economy perspective, the model presents the novel feature of a broad range of included financial variables...

In this paper, we investigate the dynamic link between the scarcity of housing collateral and economic recessions in the US. At first, we use vector error-correction models to identify negative transitory shocks to collateralizable housing wealth, which are used as proxies of housing collateral...

This paper presents a new non-parametric methodology for the description of the evolution of the asset cycle in the stock market. It uses the empirical distribution of the data; in particular the structures of the tails of return distributions to build Boom-Bust Indicators (BBI) that describe...

I show that the detrending of financial variables with the Hodrick and Prescott (1981, 1997) (HP) and band-pass filters leads to spurious cycles. I find that distortions become especially severe when considering medium-term cycles, i.e., cycles that exceed the duration of regular business...

I show that the detrending of financial variables with the Hodrick and Prescott (1981, 1997) (HP) and band-pass filters leads to spurious cycles. I find that distortions become especially severe when considering medium-term cycles, i.e., cycles that exceed the duration of regular business...

Failing to account for joint dynamics of credit and asset prices can be hazardous for countercyclical macroprudential policy. We show that composite financial cycles, emphasising expansions and contractions common to credit and asset prices, powerfully predict systemic banking crises. Further,...