We present a model of shadow banking in which financial intermediaries originate and trade loans, assemble these loans into diversified portfolios, and then finance these portfolios externally with riskless debt. In this model: i) outside investor wealth drives the demand for riskless debt and...

This paper describes how imperfect information in both capital and labor markets can, in a context of maximizing firms and perfectly flexible prices and wages, give rise to cyclical variations in unemployment whose character closely resembles that of observed business cycles

Limited liability and asymmetric information between an investment bank and its lenders provide an incentive for a bank to undercapitalise and finance overly risky business projects. To counter this market failure, national governments have imposed solvency constraints on banks. However, these...

Using data from SEC filings, I show that the typical bank loan is renegotiated five times, or every nine months. The pricing, maturity, amount, and covenants are all significantly modified during each renegotiation, whose timing is governed by the financial health of the contracting parties and...

Banks are optimally opaque institutions. They produce debt for use as a transaction medium (bank money), which requires that information about the backing assets - loans - not be revealed, so that bank money does not fluctuate in value, reducing the efficiency of trade. This need for opacity...

We study specialized lending in a credit market competition model with private information. Two banks, equipped with similar data processing systems, possess "general" signals regarding the borrower's quality. However, the specialized bank gains an additional advantage through further...

Short-term borrowing has often been blamed for precipitating financial crises. We argue that while the empirical association between a financial institution's, or country's, short-term borrowing and susceptibility to crises may, in fact, exist, the direction of causality is often precisely the...

Using novel data on 1,240 credit agreements, we investigate sources of contractual complexity in the leveraged loan market. While negative covenants are widespread, carve-out and deductible clauses that weaken them are as frequent. We propose simple measures of contractual weakness, which...

An equilibrium model of financial crises driven by Irving Fisher's financial amplification mechanism features a pecuniary externality, because private agents do not internalize how the price of assets used for collateral respond to collective borrowing decisions, particularly when binding...

This paper provides a simple model showing that the extent of competition in credit markets is important in determining the value of lending relationships. Creditors are more likely to finance credit constrained firms when credit markets are concentrated because it is easier for these creditors...