Many existing theories of financial intermediation have difficulty explaining why financial activity can generate large real effects. This paper argues that the large real effects may reflect a multiplicity of equilibria. The multiple equilibria in this paper are generated by the dynamic...

What happens when liquidity increases in credit markets and more funds are channeled from borrowers to lenders? We examine this question in a general equilibrium model where financial matchmakers help borrowers (firms) and lenders (households) search out and negotiate profitable matches and...

The welfare costs of dynamic factor taxes are analyzed in a dynamic general equilibrium model with heterogeneous endowments, abilities, and tastes. Conventional functional form restrictions yield formulas for the transition effects and marginal welfare costs of factor taxes. Heterogeneity...

Existing theories that emphasize the significance of financial intermediation for economic development have not addressed two important empirical facts: (i) the relationship between financial and real activities depends crucially on the stage of development, and (ii) financial and industrial...

[...]This article explores in several ways the structure andvocabulary of emerging payments system risks and theirmitigation. We begin by recounting several incidents of fraudand losses associated with emerging payment methods. Wethen describe an economic framework for understanding riskcontrol...

This paper reviews the extant empirical studies of financial innovation. Adopting broad criteria, the authors found just two dozen studies, over half of which (fourteen) had been conducted since 2000. Since some financial innovations are examined by more than one study, only fourteen distinct...

This paper investigates the impact of the target chief executive officer’s (CEO) postmerger position on the purchase premium and target shareholders’ abnormal returns around the announcement of the deal in a sample of bank mergers during the period 1990–2004. We find evidence that the...

This paper examines the negative externalities that may occur when a large bank fails, describes the nature of those externalities, and explores whether they may be greater in a case involving a large cross-border banking organization. The analysis suggests that the chief negative externalities...

Morningstar, Inc., has been hailed in both academic and practitioner circles as having the most influential rating system in the mutual fund industry. We investigate Morningstar’s influence by estimating the value of a star in terms of the asset flow it generates for the typical fund. We use...

The robustness of bubbles and crashes in markets for finitely lived assets is perplexing. This paper reports the results of experimental asset markets in which participants trade two assets. In some markets, price bubbles form. In these markets, traders will pay even higher prices for the asset...