In this paper, we construct a simple model designed to capture four widely held views about financial crises: [1] Interconnectedness among financial institutions (banks) can play a major role in precipitating systemic financial crises. [2] It does so by introducing loan-portfolio opacity,...

In this paper we test the hypothesis that credit policies are pro-cyclical. Our approach is based on a stochastic frontier analysis of borrower data, as in Chen and Wang (2008). We extend the applicability of the approach, and propose a novel test specification which is informative of many types...