We show theoretically and empirically how real and financial frictions amplify the impact of uncertainty shocks on firms’investment, employment, debt (term structure of debt growth), and cash holding. We start by building a model with real and financial frictions, alongside uncertainty shocks, and show how adding financial frictions to the model almost doubles the negative impact of uncertainty...

I revisit the Great Inflation and the Great Moderation for nominal and real variables. I document a dichotomy in the evolution of the cyclical volatility of financial variables since the mid-1980s. While financial price variables are smoother during the Great Moderation, financial quantity measures experience an immoderation. A model with financial frictions and financial shocks allowing for st...

We analyze the implications of financial openness to macroeconomic volatility in a small open economy. The volatility of major macroeconomic aggregates shows non-monotonic pattern with respect to the degree of financial openness in the model without domestic financial frictions. The introduction of domestic financial frictions makes the volatility patterns flatter. Our model explains the lack o...

We develop a two-country overlapping-generations model with domestic financial frictions and show that cross-country differences in financial development explain three recent patterns of international capital flows. In our model, domestic financial frictions distort the interest rates and production efficiency in the less financially developed country. Capital flows not only lead to cross-count...

Financial frictions and financial shocks can affect the trade-off between inflation stabilization and output-gap stabilization faced by a central bank. Financial frictions lead to a greater response in output following any deviation of inflation from target and thus lead to an increase in the sacrifice ratio. As a result, optimal monetary policy in the face of credit frictions is to allow great...

In the U.S. business income is taxed several times at different sources, including corporate income, dividends, capital gains, and interest payments. We investigate how the different rates above affect firm investment and the allocation of capital in the economy. To do so, we construct and calibrate a model with heterogeneous firms, borrowing constraints, costly equity issuance and endogenous e...

Incorporating financial intermediaries, with their ability to generate shocks and frictions, into macroeconomic models has recently gained substantial attention of the profession. In this commentary I ask whether the models we generated are ripe to provide valuable, quantitative advice to policymakers, especially those interested in implementing and conducting macroprudential policy. I concentr...

This paper examines the effect of financial frictions on the strength of the monetary transmission mechanism. Credit channel theory implies that the transmission mechanism of monetary policy should be stronger in countries with high levels of financial frictions, all else equal. The intuition is that in these countries, external finance premiums are more sensitive to firms’ financial leverage. ...

Recent studies have shown that the dynamics of firms (growth, job reallocation and exit) are negatively correlated with the initial size of the firm and its age. In this paper we analyze whether financial factors, in addition to technological differences, are important in generating these dynamics. We introduce financial market frictions in a basic model of industry dynamics with persistent sho...