Market distress can be the catalyst of a deleveraging wave, as in the 2007/08 financial crisis. This paper demonstrates how market distress and deleveraging can fuel each other in the presence of adverse selection problems in asset markets. At the core of the detrimental feedback loop is agents'...

We develop a general equilibrium model of banks' capital structure, featuring heterogeneous portfolio risk and an imperfectly elastic supply of bank equity stemming from financial market segmentation. In our model, equity is costly and serves as a buffer against insolvency. Banks are ex-ante...

We study banks' optimal equity buffer in general equilibrium and their response to under-capitalization. Making progress towards a "pecking order theory" for private recapitalizations, our benchmark model identifies equity issuance as individually and socially optimal, compared to deleveraging,...

When does the Federal Reserve deviate from its dual mandate of pursuing the economic goals of maximum employment and price stability and what are the consequences? We assemble the most comprehensive collection of Federal Reserve speeches to-date and apply state-ofthe-art natural language...

Using the 2013 debt limit episode in the Unites States and the introduction of the Federal Reserve’s Overnight Reverse Repurchase (ONRRP) facility as a quasi-natural experiment, we document novel financial stability benefits from the public provision of safe assets. Specifically, we show that...

We propose a parsimonious model of information choice in a global coordination game of regime change that is used to analyze debt crises, bank runs or currency attacks. A change in the publicly available information alters the uncertainty about the behavior of other investors. Greater strategic...

We model the asset-opacity choice of an intermediary subject to rollover risk in wholesale funding markets. Greater opacity means investors form more dispersed beliefs about an intermediary’s profitability. The endogenous benefit of opacity is lower fragility when profitability is expected to...

We model the opacity and deposit rate choices of banks that imperfectly compete for uninsured deposits, are subject to runs, and face a threat of entry. We show how shocks that increase bank competition or bank transparency increase deposit rates, costly withdrawals, and thus bank fragility....

Government interventions such as bailouts are often implemented in times of high uncertainty. Policymakers may therefore rely on information from financial markets to guide their decisions. We propose a model in which a policymaker learns from market activity and where market participants have...