Fire sales are forced sales of assets in which high-valuation bidders are sidelined, typically due to debt overhang problems afflicting many specialist bidders simultaneously. We overview theoretical and empirical research on asset fire sales, which shows how they can arise, how they can lead to...

A model of financial crises in emerging markets based on problems of agency in financial intermediation is developed. This model generates dynamic relationships between foreign capital inflows, domestic investment and domestic bank debt in an endogenous growth model. As a consequence of loan...

This paper examines legal rules covering protection of corporate shareholders and creditors, the origin of these rules, and the quality of their enforcement in 49 countries. The results show that common law countries generally have the best, and French civil law countries the worst, legal...