This paper presents a framework for analyzing the costs and benefits of internal vs. external capital allocation. We focus primarily on comparing an internal capital market to bank lending. While both represent centralized forms of financing, in the former case the financing is owner-provided,...

We develop a model that shows how rent-seeking behavior on the part of division managers can subvert the workings of an internal capital market. In an effort to stop rent-seeking, corporate headquarters will be effectively forced into paying bribes to some division managers. And because...

We propose an economic model of business groups that allows for the cooperative behavior of groups of firms, where the number and size of each group is determined endogenously. In this framework, more than one configuration of groups can arise in equilibrium: several different types of business...

The hypothesis that financial markets punish traders who make relatively inaccurate forecasts and eventually eliminate the effect of their beliefs on prices is of fundamental importance to the standard modeling paradigm in asset pricing. We establish necessary and sufficient conditions for...

More advanced technologies demand higher degrees of specialization - and longer chains of production connecting raw inputs to final outputs. Longer production chains are subject to a "weakest link" effect: they are more fragile and more prone to failure. Optimal chain length is determined by the...

It has been previously shown that for sufficiently large pools of patient-donor pairs, (almost) efficient kidney exchange can be achieved by using at most 3-way cycles, i.e. by using cycles among no more than 3 patient-donor pairs. However, as kidney exchange has grown in practice, cycles among...

We develop a model of the joint capital structure decisions of banks and their borrowers. Strikingly high bank leverage emerges naturally from the interplay between two sets of forces. First, seniority and diversification reduce bank asset volatility by an order of magnitude relative to that of...

For centuries, most international trade involved an exchange of complete goods. But, with recent improvements in transportation and communications technology, it increasingly entails different countries adding value to global supply chains, or what might be called quot;trade in tasks.quot; We...