In recent years the market for asset backed securities (ABS) has shown a rapid growth. In an ABS transaction assets are first pooled and then securities backed by this pool are issued. In many cases, several tranches of securities differing with respect to their priority of payment are designed....

We consider a model of external financing under ex ante asymmetric information and profit manipulation (non verifability). Contrary to conventional wisdom, the optimal contract is not standard debt, and it is not monotonic. Instead, it resembles a contingent convertible (CoCo) bond. In...

Firms often lack knowledge of the nature of the uncertainty they or their opponents face and use heuristics or approximations to determine their strategy. We define and analyze one type of “heuristic strategy”, in which firms choose strategies based on the expectation of their opponents’...

Im klassischen Modell von Diamond und Dybvig (1983) werden Bank-runs durch sich selbst erfüllende pessimistische Erwartungen der Anleger provoziert. Sie sind damit ein Sonnenflecken-Phänomen. Die spekulativen Runs können u.a. durch eine Einlagenversicherung vermieden werden. Allerdings...

In this paper a modified version of Bernanke and Blinder�s (1988) model of the bank lending channel of monetary policy under asymmetric information is presented. If, aside from reserve requirements, banks have to meet capital adequacy requirements as well, then the results suggested by...

Contrary to what is consistently assumed in the literature, the return function cannot be hump-shaped in the Stiglitz-Weiss (1981) model. This has important consequences for the possible occurrence of credit rationing and redlining. With a single class of borrowers, banks offer credit in two...

Electronic commerce and flexible manufacturing allow personalization of initially standardized products at low cost. Will customers provide the information necessary for personalization? Assuming that a consumer can control the amount of information revealed, we analyze how his decision...

Certification schemes for forest products are understood by many as a way to promote sustainable resource use when it is impossible to rely on direct enforcement of process standards. Based on the concept of ‘Self-Enforcing Contracts’, this study develops a market model that simulates the...

This paper derives the optimal financial contract when an entrepreneur can evade taxes in a model of costly state verification. In contrast to the previous literature, we find that standard debt contracts are not optimal when tax evasion is possible. Instead, the optimal contract is debt-like...