This paper examines how the choice of exchange rate regime can signal financial rectitude and, in so doing, influence a country's ability to borrow internationally in domestic currency. We develop a model in which the constant probability of a 'type change' creates incentives for disciplined...

We identify the frontier between safe and unsafe assets and show how the growth rate of the economy and its fiscal capacity interact with differences of opinion amongst investors to determine the safe asset equilibrium. Multiple equilibria emerge in our set-up due to strategic complementarities...

How does asset encumbrance affect the fragility of intermediaries subject to rollover risk? We offer a model in which a bank issues covered bonds backed by a pool of assets that is bankruptcy remote and replenished following losses. Encumbering assets allows a bank to raise cheap secured debt...

We develop an operational model of information contagion and show how it may be integrated into a mainstream, top-down, stress-testing framework to quantify systemic risk. The key transmission mechanism is a two-way interaction between the beliefs of secondary market investors and the...