In this article, we study the impact of changes of total labor costs on employment of low-wage workers in France in a period, 1990 to 1998, that saw sudden and large changes in these costs. We use longitudinal data from the French Labor Force survey ("enquete emploi") in order to understand the...

The search for the optimal, or value-maximizing, capital structure involves weighing the expected benefits of higher leverage against the expected "costs of financial distress." These costs include not only the direct costs of reorganization, but less quantifiable effects of financial trouble...

We study a model where households use home equity to finance consumption expenditures and we analyze the macroeconomic consequences of a credit crunch triggered by tightening lending standards.

The financial crisis has demonstrated the need to better analyze financial innovations. While some of these innovations are beneficial, others do not improve overall welfare and create unacceptable risks for the economy. A major impediment to efficient regulation is the lack of research...

A quantitative investigation of financial intermediation in the U.S. over the past 130 years yields the following results : (i) the finance industry’s share of GDP is high in the 1920s, low in the 1950s and 1960s, and high again in the 1990s and 2000s; (ii) most of these variations can be...

We provide a first comprehensive account of the dynamics of Eurozone countries from the creation of the Euro to the Great recession. We model each country as an open economy within a monetary union and analyze the dynamics of private leverage, fiscal policy and spreads. Our parsimonious model...

Two forces have reshaped global securities markets in the last decade: Exchanges operate at much faster speeds and the trading landscape has become more fragmented. In order to analyze the positive and normative implications of these evolutions, we study a framework that captures (i)...

We present a simple model of systemic risk and we show that each financial institution's contribution to systemic risk can be measured as its systemic expected shortfall (SES), i.e., its propensity to be undercapitalized when the system as a whole is undercapitalized. SES increases with the...

AbstractThe following sections are included:Systemic Risk and the Financial Crisis of 2007 to 2009Regulating Systemic RiskObstacle 1: Measuring Systemic RiskObstacle 2: Implementing the Tax on Systemic RiskObstacle 3: Is Moral Hazard Solved?The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer...