Corporate disclosure policies, by promoting greater transparency, foster external scrutiny and thus activity in the market for corporate control. A firm's relative reliance on takeovers versus internal board monitoring is therefore itself an aspect of its governance arrangements. However, agency...

This paper explores a firm's reliance on internal and external governance mechanisms, recognizing that the choice of one instrument relative to the other is itself part of the governance policy of the firm. Starting from the premise that firms' disclosure policies can foster external scrutiny...

Regulatory changes and technological advances have profoundly affected the competitive landscape of credit markets. In this paper, we investigate how intermediaries alter their information acquisition strategies in response to increased competition. We specify a model where the severity of...

While competition constrains the ability of banks to extract informational rents from lending relationships, their informational monopoly curtails competition through the threat of adverse selection. These opposing forces also shape banks' incentives to invest in relationship lending expertise....

We study the economic forces that drive innovation in credit-risk assessment and the role of regulators in fostering technological progress. Recent regulatory proposals base capital-adequacy standards on banks' own internal systems and call for regulators to establish a set of best practices for...

This paper analyzes the impact of two dimensions of technological progress on competition in financial services. On the one hand, better information technology may result in improved information processing; on the other, it might also lead to low cost or even free access to information through,...

This paper analyzes the impact of an information technology revolution on credit markets. We focus on two aspects of technological progress. On the one hand, better information technology may result in improved information processing; on the other, it might also lead to low cost or even free...

We investigate the interaction between banks' use of information acquisition as a strategic tool and their role in promoting the efficiency of credit markets when a bank's ability to gather information varies with its distance to the borrower. We show that banks acquire proprietary information...

This paper analyzes the impact of two dimensions of technological progress on competition in financial services. On the one hand, better information technology may result in improved information processing; on the other, it might also lead to low cost or even free access to information through,...