The paper presents an adverse selection-based explanation of the fact that some entrepreneurs choose to finance multiple projects together by issuing a single security and other entrepreneurs decide to finance each project separately. We consider the financing problem of an entrepreneur who has...

This essay surveys the body of research that asks how the efficiency of corporate investment is influenced by problems of asymmetric information and agency. I organize the material around two basic questions. First, does the external capital market channel the right amount of money to each firm?...

An farmer-entrepreneur is considering an investment in Greenhouse Lemon Plantation in Shymkent, Kazakhstan. The case presents investment details and asks the students to perform financial evaluation of the project. Questions ask about building the full capacity at once versus building gradually...

We study how adverse selection distorts equilibrium investment allocations in a Walrasian credit market with two-sided heterogeneity. Representative investor and partial equilibrium economies are special cases where investment allocations are distorted above perfect information allocations. By...

We analyze the incentives for information disclosure in financial markets. We show that borrowers may have incentives to voluntarily withhold information and that doing so is most attractive for claims that are inherently hard to value, such as portfolios of subprime mortgages. Interestingly,...

I study the impact of capital market imperfections on the exercise of a real option. An entrepreneur has private information about a venture for which she seeks outside funding. An initial investment gives access to a continuous flow of information about the project. The duration of that...

We study repurchase options (repo contracts) in a competitive asset market with asymmetric information. Gains from trade emerge from a liquidity need, but private information about asset quality prevents the full realization of trade. We obtain a unique equilibrium, which features a pooling repo...

This paper studies competitive market shutdowns due to adverse selection, where sellers post nonexclusive menus of contracts. We first show that the presence of the worst type of agents (moldy lemons) causes markets to fail only if their mass is sufficiently large. We then show that a small mass...

I study the impact of capital market imperfections on the exercise of a real option. An entrepreneur has private information about a venture for which she seeks outside funding. An initial investment gives access to a continuous flow of information about the project. The duration of that...

We examine the convertible bonds whose conversion prices can be reset under certain conditions, by extending the asymmetric information framework of Stein (1992). These convertibles are more common in Japan and China and are in sharp contrast with the convertible bonds with fixed conversion...