There is a general consensus that the root cause of the most recent turmoil in the domestic and global markets is due to a failure in our regulatory system. Yet, Congress has not supported comprehensive regulation related to the day-to-day activities of mortgage brokers and their relationship...

Consider a competitive bank whose illiquid asset portfolio is funded by short-term debt that has to be refinanced before the asset matures. We show that in this setting maximal transparency is not socially optimal, and that the existence of social externalities of bank failures further lowers...

We extend the seminal Rothschild and Stiglitz (1976) model on competitive insurance markets with asymmetric information in the spirit of Wilson (1977)'s 'anticipatory equilibrium' by introducing an additional stage in which initial contracts can be withdrawn after observation of competitors'...

Does ‘inner' competition – rivalry among network members – worsen performance in a network of cooperative banks? Inner competition might, in fact, endanger network-dependent scale economies. We test our hypothesis on Banche di Credito Cooperativo (BCCs), Italy's network of mutual...

I provide new evidence on the renegotiation of financial contracts using a comprehensive sample of over 90,000 debt contract renegotiations. I study whether the demand for monitoring determines the renegotiation intensity, defined as either the renegotiation frequency over a period of time or...

We consider takeover bidding in a Cournot oligopoly when firms have private information concerning the synergy effect of merging with a takeover target. Two auction rules are considered: standard first-price and profit-share auctions, supplemented by entry fees. Since non-merged firms benefit...

This is a draft of the first half of an open access textbook on game theory. I hope to complete the entire book by the end of 2015. After teaching game theory (at both the undergraduate and graduate level) at the University of California, Davis for 25 years, I decided to organize all my teaching...

This paper focuses on the consequences of cross-border banking and entry of multi-national banks (MNBs) for banking supervision and regulation. When a MNB expands internationally with subsidiaries, the MNB operates under the legislation of several countries - both the home country and the host...

We develop an operational model of information contagion and show how it may be integrated into a mainstream, top-down, stress-testing framework to quantify systemic risk. The key transmission mechanism is a two-way interaction between the beliefs of secondary market investors and the...

We analyze the strategic interaction between undercapitalized banks and a supervisor who may intervene by preventive recapitalization. Supervisory forbearance emerges because of a commitment problem, reinforced by fiscal costs and constrained capacity. Private incentives to comply are lower when...