The financial crisis has generated fundamental reforms in the financial regulatory system in the U.S. and internationally. Much of this reform was in direct response to the weaknesses revealed in the precrisis system. The new “macroprudential” approach to financial regulations focuses on...

We study how commodity financialization affects information transmission in a commodity futures market. The trading of financial traders injects both information and noise into the futures price. In consequence, price informativeness in the futures market first increases and then decreases with...

We surveyed all Chinese public firms in 2019 and 2022 to examine the real effects of financial markets. The response rates were close to 100%. More than 90% of firms reported that they care about the stock market for the purposes of learning information to guide real investment decisions and of...

Using the staggered implementation of the EDGAR system from 1993 to 1996 as a shock to information dissemination technologies, we examine the potential benefits and costs of modern information technologies on the real economy. On the one hand, we document that broader information dissemination...

This paper develops a model of a self-fulfilling credit market freeze and uses it to study alternative governmental responses to such a crisis. We study an economy in which operating firms are interdependent, with their success depending on the ability of other operating firms to obtain...

This paper develops a model of a self-fulfilling credit market freeze and uses it to study alternative governmental responses to such a crisis. We study an economy in which operating firms are interdependent, with their success depending on the ability of other operating firms to obtain...

A large amount of activity in the financial sector occurs in secondary financial markets, where securities are traded among investors without capital flowing to firms. The stock market is the archetypal example, which in most developed economies captures a lot of attention and resources. Is the...