Most stock exchange regulators around the world reacted to the 2007-2009 crisis by imposing bans or regulatory constraints on short-selling. Short-selling restrictions were imposed and lifted at different dates in different countries, often applied to different sets of stocks and featured...

We develop a model of financially constrained arbitrage, and use it to study the dynamics of arbitrage capital, liquidity, and asset prices. Arbitrageurs exploit price discrepancies between assets traded in segmented markets, and in doing so provide liquidity to investors. A collateral...

A central question in financial economics is how private information is incorporated into asset prices. A common method of measuring private information is the PIN measure, which uses statistical estimation of a sequential trade model of the trading process to estimate the probability of...

This paper develops a tractable real options framework to analyze the effects of asymmetric information on investment and financing decisions when firms require external funds to finance investment. Our analysis shows that corporate insiders can signal their private information to outside...

We analyze the impact of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank) on corporate bond ratings issued by credit rating agencies (CRAs). We find no evidence that Dodd-Frank disciplines CRAs to provide more accurate and informative credit ratings. Instead, following...

We study a continuous time model of a levered firm with fixed assets generating a cash flow that fluctuates with business conditions. Since external finance is costly, the firm holds a liquid (cash) reserve to help survive periods of poor business conditions. Holding liquid assets inside the...

We test if issuers of asset- and mortgage-backed securities receive rating favors from agencies with which they maintain strong business relationships. Controlling for issuer fixed effects and a large set of credit risk determinants, we show that agencies publish better ratings for those issuers...

Can banks maintain their advantage as liquidity providers when they are heavily exposed to a financial crisis? The standard argument - that banks can - hinges on deposit inflows that are seeking a safe haven and provide banks with a natural hedge to fund drawn credit lines and other commitments....

Bailing out banks requires overcoming debt overhang as well as dealing with adverse selection with respect to the quality of banks' balance sheets, in terms of heterogeneity in both the likelihood and extent of their potential shortfalls, of future asset values vis-à-vis contractual debt...

We study the functioning and possible breakdown of the interbank market in the presence of counterparty risk. We allow banks to have private information about the risk of their assets. We show how banks' asset risk affects funding liquidity in the interbank market. Several interbank market...