中文摘要
信贷市场（包括银行贷款市场）具有信息不完全和信息不对称的特征。这些信息摩擦可能与其他经济力量相互作用，造成信贷市场承压时期：在此期间，金融中介的成本异常高昂，家庭和企业难以获得信贷。信贷市场压力达到高水平时——如严重的金融危机——反过来可能引发深度且持久的衰退。我提供的证据表明，金融困境和信贷市场失灵是20世纪30年代大萧条和2007–2009年大衰退的重要根源。信贷市场状况的变化也在『常规型』经济周期以及货币政策向经济的传导中发挥作用。（JEL D82, E32, E44, E52, G21, N22）
Abstract
Credit markets, including the market for bank loans, are characterized by imperfect and asymmetric information. These informational frictions can interact with other economic forces to produce periods of credit-market stress, in which intermediation is unusually costly and households and businesses have difficulty obtaining credit. A high level of credit-market stress, as in a severe financial crisis, may in turn produce a deep and prolonged recession. I present evidence that financial distress and disrupted credit markets were important sources of the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Great Recession of 2007–2009. Changes in the state of credit markets also play a role in “ garden-variety” business cycles and in the transmission of monetary policy to the economy. (JEL D82, E32, E44, E52, G21, N22)