In this paper, we argue that government confusion about the nature of the shock to the economy when observing banks in distress has the potential to relax the time inconsistency of policymakers and the ensuing collective moral hazard that leads to endogenous systemic events. Government confusion...

Information is critical to reallocate funds efficiently. However, this same information may also hinder liquidity by raising the concerns of adverse selection. When lending and liquidity provision are separated activities, individuals that produce information to lend do not internalize its...

and strong reputation concerns.

I study the interplay between reputation and risk-taking in a dynamic stochastic environment where it is ex-ante efficient for firms to engage in safe projects, but ex-post preferred to invest in risky ones, appropriating surplus from lenders. By introducing fundamentals, I interpret the model...

are match-specific than the skills of low-wage workers, and that job separation rates are lower for high-wage workers than low-wage workers. A calibrated version of the model accounts quite well for the facts at hand.

Short-term, collateralized, debt is efficient if agents are willing to lend without producing costly information about the value of the collateral. When the economy relies on this informationally-insensitive debt, information is not renewed over time. If the value of collateral is mean...

Credit booms seem to be among the main predictors of financial crises. We find that, in emerging economies, political booms measured by increases in incumbents' popularity are important predictors too, not only of financial crises but of economic crises more generally. We propose a model in...

What a country has done in the past, and what other countries are doing in the present can feedback for good or for ill. We develop a model which can address hysteresis and contagion in sovereign debt markets. When a country's fundamentals change, those changes affect information acquisition...

Asset markets are characterized by slow booms and sudden crashes. Lending rates, for example, are more likely to experience big jumps rather than big drops. We focus on the comparison of this pattern across countries. First, we document that lending rates are more asymmetric on economies with...

During the financial crisis, life insurers sold long-term insurance policies at firesale prices. In January 2009, the average markup, relative to actuarial value, was $-25$ percent for 30-year term annuities as well as life annuities and $-52$ percent for universal life insurance. This...