We study the impact of trust on the expansion of online lending in the U.S. over the 2008-2016 period. Using data from the largest platform, we demonstrate that a misconduct-driven decline of trust in traditional banking is associated with a statistically and economically significant increase in...

We analyze how a wealth shift to emerging countries may lead to instability in developed countries. Investors exposed to expropriation risk are willing to pay a safety premium to invest in countries with good property rights. Domestic intermediaries compete for such cheap funding by carving out...

I study rollover risk in the wholesale funding market when intermediaries can hold liquidity ex ante and are subject to fire sales ex post. Precautionary liquidity restores multiple equilibria in a global rollover game. An intermediate liquidity level supports both the usual run equilibrium and...

We propose a parsimonious model of information choice in a global coordination game of regime change that is used to analyze debt crises, bank runs or currency attacks. A change in the publicly available information alters the uncertainty about the behavior of other investors. Greater strategic...

How does asset encumbrance affect the fragility of intermediaries subject to rollover risk? We offer a model in which a bank issues covered bonds backed by a pool of assets that is bankruptcy remote and replenished following losses. Encumbering assets allows a bank to raise cheap secured debt...

We model the asset-opacity choice of an intermediary subject to rollover risk in wholesale funding markets. Greater opacity means investors form more dispersed beliefs about an intermediary’s profitability. The endogenous benefit of opacity is lower fragility when profitability is expected to...

We model the opacity and deposit rate choices of banks that imperfectly compete for uninsured deposits, are subject to runs, and face a threat of entry. We show how shocks that increase bank competition or bank transparency increase deposit rates, costly withdrawals, and thus bank fragility....

Government interventions such as bailouts are often implemented in times of high uncertainty. Policymakers may therefore rely on information from financial markets to guide their decisions. We propose a model in which a policymaker learns from market activity and where market participants have...

We present a simple model to study the risk sensitivity of capital regulation. A banker funds investment with uninsured deposits and costly capital, where capital resolves a moral hazard problem in the banker's choice of risk. Investors are uninformed about investment quality, but a regulator...