We find that declining bank credit to the private sector will not necessarily constrain the economic recovery after output has bottomed out following a financial crisis. To obtain this result, we examine data from 39 financial crises, which -- as the current one -- were preceded by credit booms....

Several countries are concurrently experiencing historically low inflation rates and ageing populations. Is there a connection, as recently suggested by some senior central bankers? We undertake a comprehensive test of this hypothesis in a panel of 22 countries over the 1955-2010 period. We find...

Interest rates have moved closely together internationally in recent years, despite business cycles often being at different stages across countries. We investigate whether international monetary spillovers drove this co-movement, ie whether interest rates in core advanced economies drove...

The paper investigates small business lending as an information problem. It models the effects of information asymmetries within the bank combined with fixed wages. Two kinds of inefficiencies arise in equilibrium: the credit officer either sometimes shirks or he is occasionally fired. In both...