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A put option is a financial contract that gives the holder the right to sell an asset at a specific price by (or at) a specific date. A put option can therefore provide its holder insurance against a large drop in the stock price. This makes the prices of put options an ideal source of information for a market-based measure of the probability of a firm’s default.

Burkart and Ellingsen's (2004) model of trade credit and bank credit rationing predicts that trade credit will be used by medium-wealth and low-wealth firms to help ease bank credit rationing.

With your professional interests in foreign exchange, money markets, capital markets, and derivatives, I'm sure the past year and a half has been exciting and interesting – if those are the right words. We've been living through a period of astonishing financial turbulence, historic marketplace losses, and serious threats to financial stability.

We study the impact government expenditure has on inflation. We find that changes in government expenditure account for a substantial portion of inflation variations. We also find that inflation and inflation expectations respond negatively to fiscal spending shocks, reaffirming the supply-side channel through which inflation responds to fiscal expansions.

Although credit cards are more expensive for merchants to accept than cash or debit cards, merchants typically pass through their costs evenly to all customers. Along with consumer card rewards and banking fees, this creates cross-subsidies between payment methods. Because higher-income individuals tend to use credit cards more than those with lower incomes, our results indicate that these cross-subsidies might lead to regressive distributional effects.

Since 2009, the G-20 Framework for Strong, Sustainable and Balanced Growth has provided a mechanism for international macroeconomic policy coordination. The Framework has had some successes, including agreement on objectives for fiscal consolidation. However, post-crisis global growth has been neither strong nor balanced. Progress has also been slow in developing credible fiscal consolidation plans in some advanced countries and in increasing exchange rate flexibility in certain emerging economies. A stronger peer review process and enhanced analysis of international spillovers would increase the Framework’s influence on member policies.

Increased sovereign credit risk is often associated with sharp currency movements. Therefore, expectations of the probability of a sovereign default event can convey important information regarding future movements of exchange rates.

What makes e-money more special than cash? Is the introduction of e-money necessarily welfare enhancing? Is an e-money system necessarily stable? What is the optimal way to design an efficient and stable e-money scheme?

We incorporate a participation decision in a standard New Keynesian model with matching frictions and show that treating the labor force as constant leads to incorrect evaluation of alternative policies.

The premium on “on-the-run” Treasuries is an anomaly. I explain it using a model in which primary dealers hold inventories of Treasuries. I use the model to analyze the effects of granting access to central bank facilities.