We develop a model of asset trading with financial leverage in an economy with a continuum of investors. The investors are assumed to have diverse and rational beliefs in the sense of being compatible with observed data. We show that a reduction in the margin requirement may cause the stock...

We report results from an experiment that evaluates the consequences of having a socially motivated monitor use the market price of a bank’s traded assets to decide whether or not to intervene in the bank’s operations. Consistent with predictions of a recent theoretical paper by Bond,...