This paper studies the optimal determination of bankruptcy exemptions for risk averse borrowers who use unsecured contracts but have the possibility of defaulting. I show that, in a large class of economies, knowledge of four variables is sufficient to determine whether a bankruptcy exemption...

In this paper, I construct a model of an exchange economy in which bankruptcy arises in a manner similar to what we observe. This model is a more realistic representation of some markets in which intertemporal assets are traded. Using standard and natural assumptions, I show that every economy...

I establish an extension of the classical general equilibrium treatment of uncertainty about exogenous states to price uncertainty. Traders do not know the prices at which trade will occur, but have expectations over possible prices. They trade derivatives, price-contingent securities, to insure...

Episodes of high inflation are generally accompanied by a shortening of the maturity of nominal debt contracts. This paper develops a multiperiod general equilibrium model with incomplete markets to study the relationship between inflation and the maturity structure of nominal bonds. The model...

The Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy triggered the failure of the collateralized debt markets, which was a major contributor of the financial crisis in 2008. Such collateralized debt markets have both collateral price channel and counterparty (borrower and lender) channel of contagion. I propose a...

We document the cyclical properties of unsecured consumer credit (procyclical and volatile) and of consumer bankruptcies (countercyclical and very volatile). Using a growth model with household heterogeneity in earnings and assets with access to unsecured credit (because of bankruptcy costs) and...

Does finance facilitate efficient allocation of resources? Our aim in this paper is to find out whether increases in private and public indebtedness affect capital misallocation, which is measured as the dispersion in the return to capital across firms in different industries. For this, we use a...

In recent years, U.S. government entities have become increasingly active as commercial participants in corporate restructurings by providing rescue loans when private market funding is unavailable. Like private lenders, the government can effectively control the operations of distressed...

Investment opportunities are plenty, but not all are profitable. This papers seeks to clarify the need to make a proper fundamental analysis when investing in various securities. Fundamental analysis does not require one to be a financial analyst so as to detect high risk assets or assets with a...

The effects of endogenous undiversifiable investment and market structure changes on security pricing are analyzed within the GEI-CAPM (General Equilibrium with Incomplete Markets Capital Asset Pricing Model). Both the mutual fund and security market line theorems are extended conditional to a...