We propose a theory of unsecured debt that is based on the existence of private information about a person's type and on the fact that some debtors have the incentive to forego bankruptcy in order to signal their type. The theory formalizes the idea that the type of a person is relevant to...

Asset prices display high covariance relative to the covariance of their payoffs. (Pindyck and Rotemberg, 1993; Barberis, Shleifer and Wurgler, 2002) Many take this ‘excess covariance’ to be evidence of investor irrationality. This model reconciles the high covariance with a rational...

Sarbanes-Oxley and other regulatory reform have advocated to put more outsiders on the board. The rationale of this measure is that outsiders are more independent, while a potential drawback is that they might not know enough about the firm to be effective monitors. Having information about the...

This paper studies the provision of incentives to reallocate capital when managers are reluctant to relinquish control and have private information about the productivity of assets under their control. We show that when managers get private benefits from running projects substantial bonuses are...

This paper develops a simple competitive model of CEO pay. It appears to explain much of the rise in CEO compensation in the US economy, without assuming managerial entrenchment, mishandling of options, or theft. CEOs have observable managerial talent and are matched to assets in a competitive...

This paper develops a new framework that combines agency problems associated with managerial behavior and firm finance in a dynamic macroeconomic model. Agency costs arise because neither the shareholders nor the debt provider can directly control the manager's choice of how much risk to assume,...

This paper develops an agency model of executive compensation in dynamic industry equilibrium. Firms differ in the quality of their products, and managers can make a difference as higher effort brings about product improvement. I show that there is an inverse relationship between the magnitude...

This paper presents a continuous time model of a firm that can dynamically adjust both its capital structure and its investment choices. The model extends the existing literature by endogenizing the investment choice as well as firm value, which are both determined by an exogenous price process...