Traditional economic models have had difficulty explaining the non-monotonic real effects of credit booms and, in particular, why they have predictable negative after-effects for up to a decade. We provide a systematic transmission mechanism by focusing on the flows of resources between...

Demographic shifts, such as population ageing, have been suggested as possible explanations for the recent decade-long spell of low inflation. We identify age structure effects on inflation from cross-country variation in a panel of 22 countries from 1870 to 2016 that includes standard monetary...

Prevailing explanations of the decline in real interest rates since the early 1980s are premised on the notion that real interest rates are driven by variations in desired saving and investment. But based on data stretching back to 1870 for 19 countries, our systematic analysis casts doubt on...

While corporate credit losses have been low since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, their future evolution is quite uncertain. Using a forecasting model with a solid track record, we find that the baseline scenario ("expected losses") is benign up to 2024. This is due to policy support...

Extending a standard credit-risk model illustrates that a single factor can drive both expected losses and the extent to which they may be exceeded in extreme scenarios, ie “unexpected losses.” This leads us to develop a framework for forecasting these losses jointly. In an application to...

Early warning indicators (EWIs) of banking crises should ideally be evaluated on the basis of their performance relative to the macroprudential policy maker's decision problem. We translate several practical aspects of this problem - such as difficulties in assessing the costs and benefits of...

A parsimonious extension of a well-known portfolio credit-risk model allows us to study a salient stylized fact - abrupt switches between high- and low-loss phases - from a risk-management perspective. As uncertainty about phase switches increases, expected losses decouple from unexpected...

Early warning indicators (EWIs) of banking crises should ideally be evaluated on the basis of their performance relative to the macroprudential policy maker's decision problem. We translate several practical aspects of this problem - such as difficulties in assessing the costs and benefits of...