Macroprudential policy holds the promise of becoming a powerful tool for preventing financial crises. Financial amplification in response to domestic shocks or global spillovers and pecuniary externalities caused by Fisherian collateral constraints provide a sound theoretical foundation for this...

This paper studies the effects of FOMC forward guidance. We begin by using high frequency identification and direct measures of FOMC private information to show that puzzling responses of private sector forecasts to movements in federal funds futures rates on FOMC announcement days can be...

Crises have cleansing effects: Low-quality firms face greater financial shortfalls and invest less than high-quality firms. Public liquidity support preserves the overall production capacity. However, by dampening the cleansing effects, it distorts the quality distribution and reduces the total...

The aim of this paper is to assess the ability of social spending to smooth output shocks and to provide stabilization. The results show that overall social spending is able to smooth about 16 percent of a shock to GDP. Among its subcategories, social spending devoted to Old Age and Unemployment...

This paper studies the process that led to the Argentine crisis. The crisis is understood as a major disappointment of previous expectations, indicated by widespread insolvencies and abrupt declines in consumption. The analysis concentrates on the sequence of public and private decisions, and...

Because financial and macroeconomic conditions are tightly interconnected, financial stability considerations are an important element of any monetary policy framework. Yet, the circumstances under which it would be appropriate for the Bank to use monetary policy to lean against financial risks...

During emerging market crises, domestic agents might have sufficient collateral to borrow from the other domestic agents, but they are unable to borrow from foreigners because the country, as a whole, lacks international collateral. In this setting, we show that an (ex-post) optimizing central...

A large output gap accompanied by stable inflation close to its target calls for further monetary accommodation, but the zero lower bound on interest rates has robbed the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) of the usual tool for its provision. We examine how public statements of FOMC intentions...