Abstract: Shocks to bank lending, risk-taking and securitization activities that are orthogonal to real economy and monetary policy innovations account for more than 30 percent of U.S. output variation. The dynamic effects, however, depend on the type of shock. Expansionary securitization shocks...

We show that the diversification of risks at financial institutions has unwelcome effects by increasing the likelihood of systems crises.As a result, complete diversification is not warranted adn the optimal degree of diversification is arbitrarily low.We also identify externalities that cause...

Abstract: We consider a model of private information acquisition in which the cost of information depends on an asset's opacity. The model generates a hump-shaped relationship between opacity and the equilibrium amount of private information. In particular, the incentives to acquire information...

This paper develops a theory of the life cycle of the firm based on incentive constraints.The optimal sale of the firm is restricted by entrepreneurial moral hazard and a lack of commitment regarding future divestment.This leads to a dynamic inefficiency that causes the entrepreneur to delay and...

In this paper we study the constrained efficiency of a stock market equilibrium under moral hazard.We extend a standard general equilbrium framework (Magill and Quinzii (1999) and (2002)) to allow for a more general initial ownership distribution.We show that the market allocation is constrained...

Abstract: We analyse daily lead-lag patterns in US equity and credit default swap (CDS) returns. We first document that equity returns robustly lead CDS returns. However, we find that the CDSlag is due to common (and not firm-specific) news and arises predominantly in response to positive...

This paper examines empirically how international taxation affects the volume and pricing of cross-border banking activities for a sample of banks in 38 countries over the 1998-2008 - period. Home country corporate income taxation of foreign-source bank income is found to reduce banking-sector...

This paper studies the issue of moral hazard in the presence of decentralized international risk sharing.In the model presented, risk sharing is achieved through macro markets (markets in which claims to the GDP of a country can be traded).Moral hazard arises for the following reason: if...

Abstract: We decompose the correlation of bank stock returns into a systemic risk component and a component arising from diversi cation activities. Estimation for U.S. Bank Holding Companies (BHCs) shows the diversification component to be large and positively related to BHC performance during...

We propose a new method for measuring the quality of banks credit portfolios. This method makes use of information impounded in bank share prices by exploiting differences in their sensitivity to credit default swap spreads of borrowers of varying quality. The method allows us to derive a credit...