We develop a canonical framework to think about credit market frictions and aggregate economic activity in the context of the current crisis. We use the framework to address two issues in particular: first, how disruptions in financial intermediation can induce a crisis that affects real...

A macroeconomic model with financial intermediation is developed in which the intermediaries (banks) can issue outside equity as well as short term debt. This makes bank risk exposure an endogenous choice. The goal is to have a model that can not only capture a crisis when banks are highly...

We develop a variation of the macroeconomic model of banking in Gertler and Kiyotaki (2011) that allows for liquidity mismatch and bank runs as in Diamond and Dybvig (1983). As in Gertler and Kiyotaki, because bank net worth fluctuates with aggregate production, the spread between the expected...

We develop a variation of the macroeconomic model of banking in Gertler and Kiyotaki (2011) that allows for household liquidity risks and bank runs as in Diamond and Dybvig (1983). As in Gertler and Kiyotaki, because bank net worth fluctuates with aggregate production, the spread in the expected...

The paper studies under what conditions the value of the firm occasionally increases for a while before it suddenly drops, like a "bubble". We consider the environment where the trend of net cash flow from a firm's production depends on uncertain quality of a manager, and the manager is...

The classical and early neoclassical economists knew that the essential function of money was its role as a medium of exchange; Recently, this idea has been formalized using search-theoretic noncooperative equilibrium models of the exchange process. The goal of this paper is to use a simple model...

The paper presents a model of a monetary economy where there are differences in liquidity across assets. Money circulates because it is more liquid than other assets, not because it has any special function. There is a spectrum of returns on assets, reflecting their differences in liquidity. The...

Japan has seen episodes in which boom and bust in land prices is accompanied by boom and bust in business fixed investment. We develop a model that includes land in the production function. We show that in this model movements in land prices will be associated with movements of the capital stock...

A long standing issue in macroeconomics is that of the relation of imperfect competition to fluctuations in output. In this paper we examine the relation between monopolistic competition and the role of aggregate demand in the determination of output. We first show that monopolistically...

This paper is a theoretical study into how credit constraints interact with aggregate economic activity over the business cycle. We construct a model of a dynamic economy in which lenders cannot force borrowers to repay their debts unless the debts are secured. In such an economy, durable assets...