Banks are optimally opaque institutions. They produce debt for use as a transaction medium (bank money), which requires …, needed for allocative efficiency. Intermediaries exist to hide such information, so banks select portfolios of information …

The intersection of research and policy on consumer credit often has a Goldilocks feel. Some researchers and … policymakers posit that consumer credit markets produce too much credit. Other researchers and policymakers posit that markets … produce too little credit. I review theories and evidence on inefficient consumer credit supply. For each of eight classes of …

the financial health of the contracting parties and uncertainty regarding the borrowers' credit quality. The relative …

borrowers improves the efficiency of credit allocation. We identify in-group preferential treatment using dyadic data on the …

Current theoretical and empirical research suggests that small banks have a comparative advantage in processing soft … SMEs borrow from smaller banks and smaller banks have stronger relationships with their borrowers (Berger, Miller, Petersen … firms tend to borrow from larger banks. However, unlike BMPRS we did not find that this was because larger firms are more …

systematic risk. For a sample of European CDO issues, we find an increase of the banks%u2019 betas, but no significant stock …

only 19 large banks out of 345 use credit derivatives. Though few banks use credit derivatives, the assets of these banks … buyers of credit protection and disclose using credit derivatives to hedge loans. Banks are more likely to be net protection …'s loan portfolio and negatively or not related to other types of bank loans. The use of credit derivatives by banks is …

with good credit and poor investment opportunities. Second, investment bankers on the board are associated with larger bond …