We provide a novel characterization of self-enforcing debt limits in a general equilibrium framework of risk sharing with limited commitment, where defaulters are subject to recourse (a fractional loss of current and future endowments) and exclusion from future credit. We show that debt limits...

This study empirically examines the association among R&D engagement, seeking finance and perceived financial constraints in high-tech SMEs. R&D engagement includes the decision of R&D engagement (whether a firm was engaged in R&D) and the degree of R&D engagement (actual R&D expenditure). I...

We evaluate the role played by loan supply shocks in the decline of investment and industrial production during the Great Depression in Germany from 1927 to 1932. We identify loan supply shocks in the context of a time varying parameter vector autoregression with stochastic volatility. Our...

This paper examines whether political connections ease financial constraints faced by firms. Using firm-level data from six Central and Eastern European economies, the paper shows that politically connected firms: (i) have high levels of leverage, (ii) have low levels of profitability, (iii) are...

We show that an estimated tractable ‘buffer stock saving' model can match the 30-year decline in the U.S. saving rate leading up to 2007, the sharp increase during the Great Recession, and much of the intervening business cycle variation. In the model, saving depends on the gap between...

Some stylized facts about transactions among banks are not easily reconciled with coinsurance of short-term liquidity risks. In our model, interbank markets play a different role. We argue that lending to another bank can reduce a bank's overall portfolio risk through diversification. If...

We estimate a Bayesian VAR with a detailed characterization of the banking sector for Italy since the 1990s. We use conditional forecasting techniques to retrieve bank capital shocks related to regulatory and supervisory initiatives and quantify their impact on credit supply and economic...

We quantify the relationship between the response of output to monetary policy shocks and the share of liquidity constrained households. We do so in the context of the euro area using a Local Projections Instrumental Variables estimation. We construct an instrument for changes in interest rates...

Traditional theory suggests that higher bank profitability (or franchise value) dissuades bank risk-taking. We highlight an opposite effect: higher profitability loosens bank borrowing constraints. This enables profitable banks to take risk on a larger scale, inducing risk-taking. This effect is...