Banks' relationships with their depositors are valuable when depositors remain sticky, but this value evaporates if they leave. This tension makes banks fragile when interest rates increase and long-term asset values are depressed. In this scenario, if all of its depositors leave, the bank...

We provide evidence that agents have slow-moving beliefs about stock market volatility that lead to initial underreaction to volatility shocks followed by delayed overreaction. These dynamics are mirrored in the VIX and variance risk premiums which reflect investor expectations about volatility...

Modern financial crises are difficult to explain because they do not always involve bank runs, or the bank runs occur late. For this reason, the first year of the Great Depression, 1930, has remained a puzzle. Industrial production dropped by 20.8 percent despite no nationwide bank run. Using...

Poor financial health of intermediaries coincides with low asset prices and high risk premiums. Is this because intermediaries matter for asset prices, or simply because their health correlates with economy-wide risk aversion? In the first case, return predictability should be more pronounced...

At the announcement of a new policy, agents form a view of state-contingent policy actions and impact. We develop a method to estimate this state-contingent perception and implement it for many asset-purchase interventions worldwide. Expectations of larger support in bad states--"policy...

We study disruptions in debt markets during the COVID-19 crisis. The safer end of the credit spectrum experienced significant losses that are hard to fully reconcile with standard default or risk premium channels. Corporate bonds traded at a large discount to their corresponding CDS, and this...

We provide evidence that agents have slow-moving beliefs about stock market volatility that lead to initial underreaction to volatility shocks followed by delayed overreaction. These dynamics are mirrored in the VIX and variance risk premiums which reflect investor expectations about volatility...