We argue that earnings management and fraudulent accounting have important eco-nomic consequences. In a model where the costs of earnings management are endoge-nous, we show that in equilibrium, low productivity firms hire and invest too muchin order to pool with high productivity firms. This...

Diversified firms trade at a discount relatively to similar single-segment firms. We argue in this paper that this observed discount is not per se evidence that diversification destroys value. Firms choose to diversify. Firm characteristics, which make firms diversify, might also causethem to be...

We examine how different economies would design an optimal corporate governancesystem structured from three of the main mechanisms of corporate governance (managerial ownership, monitoring by banks, and disciplining by the takeover market). We allow for interactions among the mechanisms. The...

Two different financial systems with some opposing features have evolved in the advanced economies, namely the insider system and the outsider system. In this paper, we provide a theoretical framework where the features of the optimal governance systemare derived as a function of economy-wide...

A salient feature of the recent recession is that regions that have experienced the largest changes in household leverage have also experienced the largest declines in output and employment. We study a cash-in-advance economy in which home equity borrowing, alongside public money, is used to...

I use the neoclassical growth model to study financial intermediation in the U.S. over the past 140 years. I measure the cost of intermediation on the one hand, and the production of assets and liquidity services on the other. Surprisingly, the model suggests that the finance industry has become...

Two forces have reshaped global securities markets in the last decade: Exchanges operate at much faster speeds and the trading landscape has become more fragmented. In order to analyze the positive and normative implications of these evolutions, we study a framework that captures (i)...

We analyze public interventions to alleviate debt overhang among private rms when the government has limited information and limited resources. We compare the e¢ ciency of buying equity, purchasing existing assets, and providing debt guarantees. With sym- metric information, all the...

We study investment options in a dynamic agency model. Moral hazard creates anoption to wait and agency conflicts affect the timing of investment. The model shedslight, theoretically and quantitatively, on the evolution of firms dynamics, in particular the decline of the failure rate and the...

We provide evidence that the use of discretionary accruals to manipulate reportedearnings is more pronounced at firms where the CEO s potential total compensation is more closely tied to the value of stock and option holdings. In addition, during years of high accruals, CEOs exercise unusually...