We formalize the idea that the financial sector can be a source of non-fundamental risk. Households' desire to hedge against price volatility can generate price volatility in equilibrium, even absent fundamental risk. Fearing that asset prices may fall, risk-averse households demand safe assets...

We provide new evidence on the effects of competition on incumbents' innovative behavior by examining the rise of FinTech start-ups over the period 2000-2016. We employ machine learning techniques to classify a large global sample of patent applications into five FinTech categories. We exploit...

Financial innovation in the form of new delivery channels, products, and providers has helped push out the frontier of access to finance and thus increase the bankable and banked population. Mobile money and crowdfunding platforms are prime examples for this. The same financial innovation has...