In recessions, depository institutions accounted for most declines in mortgage flows. Recently, they partially offset their withdrawals from primary markets with accumulations of mortgage-backed securities. Increases in direct flows into agency and private pools also countered the declining...

The dramatic reduction in the growth rate of bank lending associated with the 1990-91 recession, particularly in New England, has evoked claims by many observers of a credit crunch. To overcome the difficulty in determining whether the observed slow credit growth is a demand or supply...

The relative wealth hypothesis of Froot and Stein (1991), motivated by the aggregate correlation between real exchange rates and foreign direct investment (FDI) observed in the 1980s, cannot explain one of the major shifts in FDI in the 1990s: the continued decline in Japanese FDI during a...