We offer a theory of financial c ontagion b ased o n t he i nformation c hoice o f i nvestors after observing a financial crisis e lsewhere. We study global coordination games of regime change in two regions linked by an initially unobserved macro shock. A crisis in region 1 is a wake-up call to...

Political science research has established that trust in institutions, including central banks, is shaped by socio-economic and demographic factors, as well as by the assessment of institutional features and by slow-moving components such as culture. However, the role of cognitive processes has...

Leaks of confidential information emanating from public institutions have been the focus of a long-standing line of research. Yet, their determinants as well as their potential impact on public views and on policy effectiveness remain elusive. To address this gap, we study leaks from central...

We study the redistributive effects of surprise inflation combining administrative bank data with an information provision experiment during an episode of historic inflation. On average, households are well-informed about prevailing inflation and are concerned about its impact on their wealth;...

Using microdata from a U.S. household survey, we document that immigrants who lived through a sovereign default episode are 7% less likely to hold debt relative to otherwise similar immigrants who reside in the same U.S. state and come from the same foreign country but who did not experience a...

We provide a new theory of expectations-driven business cycles in which consumers' learning from prices dramatically alters the effects of aggregate shocks. Learning from prices causes changes in aggregate productivity to shift aggregate beliefs, generating positive price-quantity comovement....

Central banks have used different types of forward guidance, where the forward guidance horizon is related to a state contingency, a calendar date or left open-ended. This paper reports cross-country evidence on the impact of these different types of forward guidance on the sensitivity of bond...

We explore whether the transparency in banks' lending activities enhances the harmonization of credit terms that a bank offers across its different geographic regions. We take advantage of a novel loan-level reporting initiative by the European Central Bank, which requires repo borrowing banks...