This paper develops a theory in which heterogeneity in bank capital choices arises in a general equilibrium despite ex ante identical banks. In a future state, the credit market is partially frozen in a crisis - high-capital banks have continued access to funding liquidity but low-capital banks...

The role that banks play in screening and monitoring their borrowers is well understood. However, these bank activities are costly and unobservable, thus difficult to contract upon. This introduces the possibility of shirking and leads to the question – who monitors the monitor? Financial...

We develop a model of a credit rating agency in which the rating agency expends due-diligence effort to learn about the issuer's credit risk, and the precision of its rating is predicated both on this effort and the rating agency's a priori unknown ability. We model the communication of ratings...

How does securitization affect the risk of the loans that are originated for securitization? While the standard view is that the originate-to-distribute (OTD) model weakens the originator's screening incentives and leads to higher risk, theories on reputation suggest that an originator's concern...

We examine the multi-faceted effect of creditor rights on the way banks monitor, operate and finance themselves. We present a simple analytical model that shows that a strengthening of creditor rights reduces the need for banks to monitor their borrowers; and that banks, as a result, tilt their...