This paper develops a model in which managers can signal their firms' true values by using either a dividend or a stock repurchase or both. The authors explain a number of sylized facts about these cash- disbursement mechanisms, particularly those concerning the relative magnitudes of stock...

In this paper we explore the nature of equilibria in an asymmetrically informed bank credit market in which credit applicants know their own (intrinsic) default risks, but potential lenders can discover these default risks only by expending resources to produce information. The resolution of...

This paper studies the dynamic investment policies of firms under asymmetric information. Managers make decisions to maximize the wealth of existing shareholders. In equilibrium, the superior firms invest 'myopically', choosing intrinsically lower-valued projects that produce 'early' cash flows....

We study a competitive credit market equilibrium in which all agents are risk neutral and lenders a priori unaware of borrowers' default probabilities. Admissible credit contracts are characterized by the credit granting probability, the loan quantity, the loan interest rate and the collateral...

The paper explains the recent decline in bank asset quality using the notion of information reusability. Banks are viewed as information processors; they exist because of their advantage in extracting the surplus associated with the reusability of borrower-specific information. It is shown that...

This paper considers a setting in which managers have private information about the values of their firms and can communicate it to uninformed investors through the use of two signals: capital structure and inventory accounting method. We show conditions under which a separating equilibrium with...

The characteristics of fixed and variable rate bank loan commitments are analyzed in a contingent-claims framework, and valuation expressions are derived for these commitments. The valuation expressions are used to present estimates of the impact of interest rate uncertainty on the liability...

Examined in this paper is the choice between private and public incorporation of an asset for an entrepreneur (asset owner) who hires a manager and with superior information about the asset's return distribution. Public sale of equity is shown to be the preferred alternative when (a) capital...

The behavior of economic agents in the presence of uncertainty about exogenous events and imperfect information about the endogenously influenced actions of other agents with whom they contract has been receiving growing attention. In particular, the economic theory of agency explicitly...