Why does the market discipline that banks face seem too weak during good times and too strong during bad times? This paper shows that using rollover risk as a disciplining device is effective only if all banks face purely idiosyncratic risk. However, if banks' assets are correlated, a two-sided...

Banks hold liquid and illiquid assets. An illiquid bank that receives a liquidity shock sells assets to liquid banks in exchange for cash. We characterize the constrained efficient allocation as the solution to a planner's problem and show that the market equilibrium is constrained inefficient,...

Standard factor pricing models do not capture well the common time-series or cross-sectional variation in average returns of financial stocks. We propose a five-factor asset pricing model that complements the standard Fama and French (1993) three-factor model with a financial sector ROE factor...

We study the determinants of active debt management through issuance and refinancing decisions for firms around the world. We leverage instrument-level data to create a comprehensive picture of the maturity, currency, and security type composition of firms' debt for a large cross-section of...

I exploit a natural experiment in South Korea to examine the real effects of macroprudential foreign exchange (FX) regulations designed to reduce risk-taking by financial intermediaries. By using crossbank variation in the regulation's tightness, I show that it causes a reduction in the supply...

This paper examines how risk in trading activity can affect the volatility of asset prices. We look for this relationship in the behavior of interest rate swap spreads and in the volume and interest rates of repurchase contracts. Specifically, we focus on convergence trading, in which...

The financial crisis provides a natural experiment for testing theoretical predictions of the equity underwriter’s role following an initial public offering. Clients of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and Wachovia saw their stock prices fall almost 5 percent, on average, on the...

We study credit ratings on subprime and Alt-A mortgage-backed-securities (MBS) deals issued between 2001 and 2007, the period leading up to the subprime crisis. The fraction of highly rated securities in each deal is decreasing in mortgage credit risk (measured either ex ante or ex post),...

This paper develops a model of financial institutions that borrow short-term and invest in long-term marketable assets. Because these financial intermediaries perform maturity transformation, they are subject to runs. We endogenize the profits of an intermediary and derive distinct liquidity and...

This paper provides a quantitative account of the tri-party repo market during the recent financial crisis. Using data from July 2008 to January 2010, we show that the level of haircuts and the amount of funding were surprisingly stable in this market. The stability of the haircuts contrasts...