I study optimal financial contracting when neither cash flows nor the risk profile of project choices are verifiable. Using a contracting framework, I show the resulting two frictions (cash-diversion and asset-substitution) are intricately linked: to address the cash-diversion problem, an...

Market distress can be the catalyst of a deleveraging wave, as in the 2007/08 financial crisis. This paper demonstrates how market distress and deleveraging can fuel each other in the presence of adverse selection problems in asset markets. At the core of the detrimental feedback loop is agents'...

Financial institutions constitute an increasingly important cornerstone of capital markets, yet research at the intersection of asset management contracts and asset pricing remains sparse. In this paper, I study how externalities of managerial contracts affect asset prices in the context of...

Do rating agencies increase or decrease financial market stability? This paper analyzes whether credit rating agencies may help to avoid inefficient self-fulfilling credit defaults. If investors follow risk-dominant strategies, we show that rating announcements and investors' private information...

This paper studies the effects of redistributive taxation in credit markets with adverse selection and shows that there exists a range of taxes that creates Pareto improvement relative to the (zero-tax) market allocation by increasing aggregate investment. For sufficiently high taxes, an...

This paper studies the effects of redistributive taxation in credit markets with adverse selection and shows that there exists a range of taxes that creates Pareto improvement relative to the (zero-tax) market allocation by increasing aggregate investment. For sufficiently high taxes, an...

We study the ability of a manager, who seeks outside financing for a new project, to disclose private information about the project's risk. We assume the manager and the outside investor that offers the best financing terms may have heterogeneous and privately known risk preferences...

We construct a synthesized model to study credit rationing by loan size. In our model, the borrower faces a trade-off between raising debt and exerting costly effort to undertake an investment project. In the absence of agency costs, increasing the loan size at the equilibrium interest rate...

We analyze competitive credit markets with asymmetric information in which borrowers seek financing for either positive or negative net present value projects. The striking result is that there always exists an equilibrium where investment is efficient, while competitive lenders make strictly...

We study resource allocation under private information when the planner cannot prevent bilateral side trading between consumers and firms. Adverse selection and side trading severely restrict feasible trades, as each marginal quantity must be fairly priced given the consumer types who purchase...