This paper considers the "DeFi intermediation chain"--the market structure that underlies the creation and distribution of ETH, the native cryptocurrency of Ethereum--to examine how information asymmetry shapes intermediation rents. We argue that using proof-of-stake blockchain technology in...

The paper surveys the recent work on economics of information with endogenous information structures where individuals can directly communicate information with each other. We consider the theoretical work on cheap talk, Bayesian persuasion, and information design, and review the implications of...

Principal-agent models take outside options, determining participation and incentive constraints, as given. We construct a general equilibrium model where workers' reservation wages and the maximum punishment acceptable before workers quit are instead determined endogenously. We simultaneously...

We study specialized lending in a credit market competition model with private information. Two banks, equipped with similar data processing systems, possess "general" signals regarding the borrower's quality. However, the specialized bank gains an additional advantage through further...

This paper develops a model of a self-fulfilling credit market freeze and uses it to study alternative governmental responses to such a crisis. We study an economy in which operating firms are interdependent, with their success depending on the ability of other operating firms to obtain...

Credit market freezes in which debt issuance declines dramatically and market liquidity evaporates are typically observed during financial crises. In the financial crisis of 2008-09, the structured credit market froze, issuance of corporate bonds declined, and secondary credit markets became...

Can incorporating expectations-based-reference-dependence (EBRD) considerations reduce seemingly dominated choices in the Deferred Acceptance (DA) mechanism? We run two experiments (total N = 500) where participants are randomly assigned into one of four DA variants--{static, dynamic} * {student...

This paper proposes a methodology for measuring credit booms and uses it to identify credit booms in emerging and industrial economies over the past four decades. In addition, we use event study methods to identify the key empirical regularities of credit booms in macroeconomic aggregates and...

By analyzing 20 developed countries over 1920-2012, we find the following evidence of overoptimism and neglect of crash risk by bank equity investors during credit expansions: 1) bank credit expansion predicts increased bank equity crash risk, but despite the elevated crash risk, also predicts...