We explain the emergence of a variety of intermediaries in a model based only on differences in their funding costs. Banks have a low cost of capital due to, say, safety nets or money-like liabilities. We show, however, that this can be a disadvantage, because it exacerbates...

We develop a theory of how corporate lending and financial intermediation change based on the fundamentals of the firm and its environment. We focus on the interaction between the prospective net worth or liquidity of an industry and the firm's internal governance or pledgeability. Variations in...

We propose a theory of financial intermediaries operating in markets influenced by investor sentiment. In our model, banks make loans, securitize these loans, trade in them, or hold cash. They can also borrow money, using their security holdings as collateral. We embed such banks in a stylized...

We present a model to study the dynamics of risk premia during crises in asset markets where the marginal investor is a financial intermediary. Intermediaries face a constraint on raising equity capital. When the constraint binds, so that intermediaries' equity capital is scarce, risk premia...

I consider banks' role in providing funding liquidity (the ability to raise cash on demand) and market liquidity (the ability to trade assets at low cost), and how these roles have evolved. Traditional banks made illiquid loans funded with liquid deposits, thus producing funding liquidity on the...

What determines the technology that a country adopts? While many factors affect technological adoption, the efficiency of the country's financial system may also play a significant role. To address this question, a dynamic contract model is embedded into a general equilibrium setting with...

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...

The availability of credit varies over the business cycle through shifts in the leverage of financial intermediaries. Empirically, we find that intermediary leverage is negatively aligned with the banks' Value-at-Risk (VaR). Motivated by the evidence, we explore a contracting model that captures...

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...

Financial intermediaries borrow in order to lend. When credit is increasing rapidly, the traditional deposit funding (core liabilities) is supplemented with other funding (non-core liabilities). We explore the hypothesis that monetary aggregates reflect the size of non-core and core liabilities...