This article presents a model in which, contrary to conventional wisdom, competi- tion can make banks more reluctant to take excessive risks: As competition intensifies and margins decline, banks face more-binding threats of failure, to which they may respond by reducing their risk-taking. Yet,...

The stock market collapse led to political tensions between generations due to the fuzzy definition of the property rights over the pension funds’ wealth. The problem is best resolved by the introduction of generational accounts. Modern consumption and portfolio theory shows that the younger...

This paper studies an intermediated market operated by middlemen with high inventory holdings. I present a directed search model in which middlemen are less likely to experience a stockout because they have the advantage of inventory capacity, relative to other sellers. The model explains why...

This paper addresses the issue of the choice of the optimalinstrument to sell new shares, this choice being price versusquantity discrimination (rationing). Previous results in theliterature (Benveniste and Wilhelm, 1990) show that the issuing firmwould be better off if allowed to use both price...

We analyze financial support for the entrepreneurial sector. State support can raise welfare by relaxing financial constraints, but it can also reduce lending standards if entrepreneurs substitute public sources of collateral for their own assets, if it encourages excessive entrepreneurial...

We examine the impact CDS protection on lending relationships and efficiency. CDS insulate lenders against losses from forcing borrowers into default and liquidation. This improves the credibility of foreclosure threats, which can have positive implications for borrower incentives and credit...

In imperfectly competitive credit markets, banks can face a tradeoff between exploiting their market power and enforcing hard budget constraints. As market power rises, banks eventually find it too costly to discipline underperforming borrowers by stopping their projects. Lending relationships...

Firms have not historically called their convertible bonds as soon as they could force conversion. Various explanations for the delay rely on the size of the dividends that bondholders forgo so long as they do not convert. We investigate an important change in convertible security design, namely...

We embed proprietary trading into a model of bank lending. Opportunities to engage in purely speculative trading can harm the real economy. This is because banks, when devoting cheap but scarce deposits to lending rather than to gambling, must be compensated for giving up gambling rents. This...

In a democracy, a political majority can influence both the corporategovernance structure and the return to human and financial capital.We argue that when financial wealth is sufficiently diffused, thereis political support for a strong governance role for dispersed equitymarket investors, and...