We study product innovation and imitation in the market of corporate underwriting with a dynamic model where client switching costs and the bankers’ expertise in deal structuring characterize the life cycle of a security. While the clientele loyalty allows positive rent extraction, the superior...

This paper studies the impact of cash constraints on equilibrium research intensities in a patent race between a current owner of the “state of the art” technology (the incumbent) and entrants. We develop a simple model, where players need to raise funds from imperfectly informed creditors to...

In June 2003 Swiss banks held over CHF 500 billion in mortgages. This important segment accounts for about 63% of all loan portfolios of Swiss banks. Since default insurance is not common in Switzerland, the corresponding risks are a severe threat for the health of the financial system. We...

The wealth dynamics of insurance companies strongly depends on the success of their investment strategies, but also on liquidity shocks which occur during unfavorable years, when indemnities to be paid to the clients exceed collected premia. An investment strategy that does not take liquidity...

We are interested in the macroeconomic implications of the separation of ownership and control. An alternative decentralized interpretation of the stochastic growth model is proposed, one where shareholders hire a self-interested manager who is in charge of the firm’s hiring and investment...

Two different probability measures are of importance when calculating the risk of a large portfolio: the risk-neutral measure for pricing, and the real measure to project true earnings. When using Monte Carlo, the natural method is to conduct two different simulations, one in each probability...

In this paper we develop a structural model of counterparty risk . In particular we provide closed form formulae for the price of risky debt and equity, which depend up on the lending/borrowing relationships in the economy. Our model applies to completely general lender/borrower relationships,...

This short paper establishes two conditions that allow to verify easily the strongquasi convexity of the objective function in a non linear least -squares problem, thereby the unicity of the minimum over a convex set.

Markowitz and Sharpe won the Nobel Prize in Economics more than a decade ago for the development of Mean-Variance analysis and the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM). In the year 2002, Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in Economics for the development of Prospect Theory. Can these two apparently...

When information is costly, a seller may wish to prevent prospective buyers from acquiring information, for the cost of information acquisition is ultimately borne by the seller. A seller can achieve the desired prevention of information acquisition through posted-price selling, by offering...