Introducing assets backed by physical collateral, we extend the Cornet and De Boisdeffre (2002) model of asymmetric information to allow for default. We show that, independently of the financial-informational structure, equilibrium exists.

The Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy triggered the failure of the collateralized debt markets, which was a major contributor of the financial crisis in 2008. Such collateralized debt markets have both collateral price channel and counterparty (borrower and lender) channel of contagion. I propose a...

The Lehman Brothers' 2008 bankruptcy spread losses to its counterparties even when Lehman was a lender of cash, because collateral for that lending was tied up in the bankruptcy process. I study the implications of such lender default using a general equilibrium network model featuring...

Financial innovations that change how promises are collateralized can affect investment, even in the absence of any change in fundamentals. In C-models, the ability to leverage an asset always generates over-investment compared to Arrow Debreu. The introduction of CDS always leads to...

This is the graduation speech I gave on receiving an honorary doctorate at the University of Athens Economics and Business School. I talk about my Greek family, about how I got interested in economics, and then how in the 1990s I came to think about default, collateral, and leverage as the...

A recent literature shows how an increase in volatility reduces leverage. However, in order to explain pro-cyclical leverage it assumes that bad news increases volatility, that is, it assumes an inverse relationship between first and second moments of asset returns. This paper suggests a reason...

In this paper we examine the effects of default and collateral on risk sharing. We assume that there is a large set of assets which all promise a risk less payoff but which distinguish themselves by their collateral requirements. In equilibrium agents default, the assets have different payoffs,...

We study financial markets where agents share risks, but have incentives to default and their financial positions might not be transparent, that is, might not be mutually observable. We show that a lack of position transparency results in a counterparty risk externality, that manifests itself in...

By introducing repo markets we understand how agents need to borrow issued securities before shorting them: (re)-hypothecation is at the heart of shorting. Non-negative amounts of securities in the box of an agent (amounts borrowed or owned but not lent on) can be sold, and recursive use of...

Páscoa and Seghir (2009) presented two examples to show that in the presence of utility penalties for default, collateral requirements do not always eliminate the occurrence of Ponzi schemes and equilibria may fail to exist. This paper aims at providing a counterexample to their claim. We show...