We model the link between inequality, lack of political commitment, and ex-cessive risk taking. If politicians cannot commit to a long-term tax schedule, increasing returns to tax avoidance induce the middle class to take on non rewarded ?nancial risk despite risk aversion. Electoral pressure...

We model the link between inequality, lack of political commitment, and ex-cessive risk taking. If politicians cannot commit to a long-term tax schedule, increasing returns to tax avoidance induce the middle class to take on non rewarded ?nancial risk despite risk aversion. Electoral pressure...

Afluent households can respond to taxation with means that are not economically viable for the rest of the population, such as sophisticated tax plans and international tax arbitrage. This paper studies an economy in which an inequality-averse social planner faces agents who have access to a...

We model the link between inequality and excessive risk taking. In the presence of increasing returns to tax avoidance, the middle class is willing to take non rewarded financial risk despite risk aversion. Electoral pressure may lead an incumbent politician to endorse this excessive risk taking...

The structure of securitization deals, referred to as tranching , is standard. In those transactions, claims on cash flows generated by the collateral are split into several classes of notes, at least 3 and possibly more than 5. Each class is called a tranche and has absolute priority in the...

Liquidity, deÞned as the ease with which an asset may be marketed, has a self-fulfilling dimension. If investors in the primary market for a new asset fear an illiquid secondary market, the issuance does not take off, thereby vindicating the initial concern about an illiquid secondary market....

We offer a model of currency carry trades in which carry traders earn positive excess returns if they successfully coordinate on supplying excessive capital to a target economy. The interest-rate differential between their funding currency and the target currency is their coordination device. We...

This paper develops a model in which an arbitrageur may prefer to incur limits to arbitrage rather than seamlessly refinance his positions with other arbitrageurs in order to relax his capital constraints. Such deliberate limits to arbitrage arise because the sale of a position cannot be...

that would be sustainable in a frictionless economy, and studies the impact of bubbly equilibrium price paths on mortgage terms.

This paper develops a model in which traders may secretly take fair bets in complete markets in order to temporarily manipulate their reputation and attract more funds. It then solves for contracts that mitigate this friction. Such contracts must ensure that the present value of the trader's...