We present a simple model of sovereign debt crises in which a country chooses its optimal mix of short and long-term debt contracts subject to standard contracting frictions: the country cannot commit to repay its debts nor to a specific path of future debt issues, and contracts cannot be made...

We document that the global scope and depth of the crisis the began with the collapse of the subprime mortgage market in the summer of 2007 is unprecedented in the post World War II era and, as such, the most relevant comparison benchmark is the Great Depression (or the Great Contraction, as...

A central result in international macroeconomics is that a government cannot simultaneously opt for open financial markets, fixed exchange rates, and monetary autonomy; rather, it is constrained to choosing no more than two of these three. In the wake of the Great Recession, however, there has...

We develop a theory that rationalizes the use of a dominant unit of account in an economy. Agents enter into non-contingent contracts with a variety of business partners. Trade unfolds sequentially in credit chains and is subject to random matching. By using a dominant unit of account, agents...

In this paper, we review three branches of theoretical literature on financial crises. The first one deals with banking crises originating from coordination failures among bank creditors. The second one deals with frictions in credit and interbank markets due to problems of moral hazard and...

We study the dynamics linking monetary policy with bank leverage and show that adjustments in leverage act as the linchpin in the monetary transmission mechanism that works through fluctuations in risk-taking. Motivated by the evidence, we formulate a model of the "risk-taking channel" of...

In contrast to earlier recessions, the monetary regimes of many small economies have not changed in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. This is due in part to the fact that many small economies continue to use hard exchange rate fixes, a reasonably durable regime. However, most of the...

Has the US dollar delivered the benefits that the rest of the world is expecting from its holdings of international liquidity? US government debt has been liquid and safe, and it is supplied in sufficient quantity. But it has given a low return to the countries that accumulated the most...

Open economy macro theory says that when a country is subject to idiosyncratic macro shocks, it should have its own currency and a flexible exchange rate. But recently in many countries policy rates have been pushed down close to the lower bound, limiting the ability of policy-makers to...

The global economy has a chronic shortage of safe assets which lies behind many recent macroeconomic imbalances. This paper provides a simple model of the Safe Asset Mechanism (SAM), its recessionary safety traps, and its policy antidotes. Safety traps share many common features with...