This survey reviews the literature on the political economy of financial structure, broadly defined to include the size of capital markets and banking systems as well as the distribution of access to external finance across firms.The theoretical literature on the institutional basis for...

In response to technological change, U.S. corporations have been investing more in intangible capital. This transformation is empirically associated with lower leverage and greater cash holdings, and commonly explained as a precautionary response to reduced debt capacity. We model how firms'...

The paper studies risk mitigation associated with capital regulation, in a context when banks may choose tail risk assets. We show that this undermines the traditional result that higher capital reduces excess risk-taking driven by limited liability. When capital raising is costly, poorly...

This paper discusses liquidity regulation when short-term funding enables credit growth but generates negative systemic risk externalities. It focuses on the relativemerit of price versus quantity rules, showing how they target different incentives for risk creation.When banks differ in credit...