The crisis of 2007-09 has been characterized by a sudden freeze in the market for short-term, secured borrowing. We present a model that can explain a sudden collapse in the amount that can be borrowed against finitely-lived assets with little credit risk. The borrowing in this model takes the...

This paper analyzes debt-equity choice for financing a two-stage investment when a firm’s insiders have private information about the firm’s expected earnings. When private information is one-dimensional (for example when short-term earnings are common knowledge while long-term earnings are...

While Arzac and Glosten (2005) affirm that "the value of tax shields depends upon the nature of the equity stochastic process, which, in turn, depends upon the free cash flow process," I prove that the value of tax shields depends only upon the nature of the stochastic process of the net...

Motivated by the literature on limits-to-arbitrage, we build an equilibrium model of commodity markets in which speculators are capital constrained, and commodity producers have hedging demands for commodity futures. Increases (decreases) in producers' hedging demand (speculators' risk-capacity)...

This paper investigates the information in corporate credit ratings. We examine the extent to which firms' credit ratings measure raw probability of default as opposed to systematic risk of default, a firm's tendency to default in bad times. We find that credit ratings are dominated as...

Banks hold liquid and illiquid assets. An illiquid bank that receives a liquidity shock sells assets to liquid banks in exchange for cash. We characterize the constrained efficient allocation as the solution to a planner's problem and show that the market equilibrium is constrained inefficient,...

This study conducts an empirical examination of the impact of market conditions on credit spreads motivated by recently developed structural credit risk models. Using corporate credit spreads, we find that macroeconomic conditions mainly affect low rated bonds. In particular, the CPI and yield...

This study conducts an empirical examination of the impact of market conditions on credit spreads motivated by recently developed structural credit risk models. Using corporate credit spreads, we find that macroeconomic conditions mainly affect low rated bonds. In particular, the CPI and yield...

This paper attempts to assess the economic significance and implications of collateralization in different financial markets, which is essentially a matter of theoretical justification and empirical verification. We present a comprehensive theoretical framework that allows for collateralization...

Tim Xiao: This paper attempts to assess the economic significance and implications of collateralization in different financial markets, which is essentially a matter of theoretical justification and empirical verification. We present a comprehensive theoretical framework that allows for...