We show that the allocation of failed banks in the Great Recession was likely distorted because potential acquirers of these banks were poorly capitalized. We illustrate this phenomenon within a model of auctions with budget constraints. In our model poor capitalization of some potential...

We illustrate the welfare benefit of tax subsidies to corporate debt financing and study how the social cost/benefit trade-off of the subsidy changes with the duration of industry distress. To illustrate the benefit, we model two firms, which engage in a socially wasteful competition for...