We explore how large and small banks make funding decisions when the government provides system-wide bailouts to the financial sector. We show that bank size, purely on strategic grounds, is a key determinant of banks' leverage choices, even when bailout policies treat large and small banks...

We study the relationship between homebuyers' beliefs about future house price changes and their mortgage leverage choices. From a theoretical perspective, whether more pessimistic homebuyers choose more or less leverage is ambiguous and depends on their willingness to reduce the size of their...

This paper studies financial and monetary policy in environments in which equity investors and creditors may have distorted beliefs. We characterize conditions under which it is optimal to tighten or relax leverage caps in response to arbitrary changes in beliefs. The optimal policy response to...

This paper characterizes the efficiency properties of competitive economies with financial constraints, in which phenomena such as fire sales and financial amplification may arise. We show that financial constraints lead to two distinct types of pecuniary externalities: distributive...

We explore how large and small banks make funding decisions when the government provides system-wide bailouts to the financial sector. We show that bank size, purely on strategic grounds, is a key determinant of banks' leverage choices, even when bailout policies treat large and small banks...

This paper studies the optimal determination of bankruptcy exemptions for risk averse borrowers who use unsecured contracts but have the possibility of defaulting. I show that, in a large class of economies, knowledge of four variables is sufficient to determine whether a bankruptcy exemption...

This paper characterizes optimal monetary policy in a canonical heterogeneous-agent New Keynesian (“HANK”) model with wage rigidity. We develop a timeless Ramsey approach to study optimal long-run policy, time inconsistency, and optimal stabilization policy, as well as optimal policy under...

This paper develops a new approach to make welfare assessments based on the notion of Dynamic Stochastic Generalized Social Marginal Welfare Weights (DS-weights). For a large classof dynamic stochastic economies with heterogeneous individuals, we show that the aggregatewelfare assessment of a...

This paper studies the optimal design of second-best corrective regulation, when some agents or activities cannot be perfectly regulated. We show that policy elasticities and Pigouvian wedges are sufficient statistics to characterize the marginal welfare impact of regulatory policies in a large...

This paper studies optimal second-best corrective regulation, when some agents/activities cannot be perfectly regulated. We show that policy elasticities and Pigouvian wedges are sufficient statistics to characterize the marginal welfare impact of regulatory policies in a large class of...