In the paper, Leverage, Moral Hazard, and Liquidity, forthcoming in the Journal of Finance (February 2011), the authors argue that the buildup of leverage in the financial sector in good economic times helps explain why adverse asset shocks in such times are associated with a severe drying-up of liquidity and deep discounts in asset prices. We illustrate that while the incidence of financial crises is lower when expectations of fundamentals are good, their severity can in fact be greater in such times due to greater system-wide leverage.

The core foundation of their theoretical model lies in the idea that when adverse asset shocks wipe out capital base of financial intermediaries, their short-term debt cannot be rolled over due to attendant agency problems, in particular, due to the problem that intermediaries may gamble excessively if leverage is not reduced. They tie this problem of rollover risk with the following facts: (i) the prominence of short-term rollover debt in the capital structure of financial firms, and (ii) the low cost of rollover debt in good economic times, which leads to the entry of highly leveraged firms in the financial sector. All of these factors played an important role in the financial crisis of 2007 to 2009 and the period preceding it.

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