Many observers have argued that credit default swaps contributed significantly to the credit crisis. Of particular concern to these observers are that credit default swaps trade in the largely unregulated over-the-counter market as bilateral contracts involving counterparty risk and that they...

We develop a parsimonious model to study the equilibrium and socially optimal decisions of banks to enter, trade in, and possibly exit, an OTC market. Although we endow all banks with the same trading technology, banks' optimal entry and trading decisions endogenously lead to a realistic market...

We develop a model of equilibrium entry, trade, and price formation in over-the- counter (OTC) markets. Banks trade derivatives to share an aggregate risk subject to two trading frictions: they must pay a fixed entry cost, and they must limit the size of the positions taken by their traders...

During the financial crisis apparently centralized markets continued to function while trade in OTC markets froze. We use search-and-bargaining theory to ascertain conditions that allow trade to temporarily freeze in decentralized markets, focusing on the roles of liquidity and self-fulfilling...

We extend Duffie, Garleanu, and Pedersen's (2005) search-theoretic model of over-the-counter asset markets, allowing for a decentralized inter-dealer market with arbitrary heterogeneity in dealers' valuations or inventory costs. We develop a solution technique that makes the model fully...

We develop a model of monetary exchange in bilateral over-the-counter markets to study the effects of monetary policy on asset prices and financial liquidity. The theory predicts asset prices carry a speculative premium that reflects the asset's marketability and depends on monetary policy and...

We study the efficiency of dealers' liquidity provision and the desirability of policy intervention in over-the-counter (OTC) markets during crises. Our theory emphasizes two key frictions in OTC markets: finding counterparties takes time, and trade is bilateral, with quantities and prices...

We provide the impact on asset prices of search-and-bargaining frictions in over-the-counter markets. Under certain conditions, illiquidity discounts are higher when counterparties are harder to find, when sellers have less bargaining power, when the fraction of qualified owners is smaller, or...

The 1964 Securities Acts Amendments extended the mandatory disclosure requirements that had applied to listed firms since 1934 to large firms traded Over-the-Counter (OTC). We find several pieces of evidence indicating that investors valued these disclosure requirements, two of which are...

We study how intermediation and asset prices in over-the-counter markets are affected by illiquidity associated with search and bargaining. We compute explicitly the prices at which investors trade with each other as well as marketmakers' bid and ask prices in a dynamic model with strategic...