Prior research on "strategic voting" has reached the conclusion that unanimity rule is uniquely bad: it results in destruction of information, and hence makes voters worse off. We show that this conclusion depends critically on the assumption that the issue being voted on is exogenous, that is,...

The paper seeks to characterize what information is always available for contracting, independent of the form of the contract and the probabilities of different states of nature. The paper denotes such information as contractible. It is established that it is possible to speak uniquely of...

A common feature of financial intermediaries is that the welfare of one borrower is adversely affected by the poor performance of other borrowers. That is, there exists a degree of joint liability among the borrowers of a financial intermediary. This paper provides an explanation for this...

We study optimal enforcement in credit markets in which the only threat facing a defaulting borrower is restricted access to financial markets. We solve for the optimal level of exclusion, and link it to observed institutional arrangements. Regulation in this environment must accomplish two...