Empirical evidence suggests that banking panics are related to the business cycle and are not simply the result of "sunspots." Panics occur when depositors perceive that the returns on bank assets are going to be unusually low. We develop a simple model of this. In this setting, bank runs can be...

This paper explains why some firms prefer to pay dividends rather than repurchase shares. When institutional investors are relatively less taxed than individual investors, dividends induce "ownership clientele" effects. Firms paying dividends attract relatively more institutions, which have a...

In standard asset pricing theory, investors are assumed to invest directly in financial markets. The role of financial institutions is ignored. The focus in corporate finance is on agency problems. How do you ensure that managers act in shareholders' interests? There is an inconsistency in...