We explore the business-cycle implications of agency problems between firms and financiers. We show how these problems create liquidity shortages that can lead to corporate bankruptcy, and may generate aggregate, endogenous cycles in an economy that otherwise would have had a unique, stationary...

Many economists argue that the primary economic function of banks is to provide cheap credit, and to facilitate this function, they advocate the strict protection and enforcement of creditor rights. But banks can serve another important economic function: through project screening they can...

Creditors often share information about their customers' credit records. Besides helping them to spot bad risks, this acts as a disciplinary device. If creditors are known to inform one another of defaults, borrowers must consider that default on one lender would disrupt their credit rating with...