In this paper I develop a model of a competitive financial system with unrestricted but costly entry and an endogenously determined number of competing financial institutions (“banks” for short). Banks can make standard loans on which plentiful historical data are available and unanimous...

An enduring puzzle is why credit rating agencies (CRAs) use a few categories to describe credit qualities lying in a continuum, even when ratings coarseness reduces welfare. We model a cheap-talk game in which a CRA assigns positive weights to the divergent goals of issuing firms and investors....