We analyze shareholders' incentives to change the leverage of a firm that has already borrowed substantially. As a result of debt overhang, shareholders have incentives to resist reductions in leverage that make the remaining debt safer. This resistance is present even without any government...

We analyze shareholders' incentives to change the leverage of a firm that has already borrowed substantially. As a result of debt overhang, shareholders have incentives to resist reductions in leverage that make the remaining debt safer. This resistance is present even without any government...

We apply theories of capital market failure to ana1yzeoptima1 financing of risky higher education. In the market solution,students can only finance their education through debt. There isunderinvestment in human capita1, because some students with socia1lyprofitable investments in human capita1...

Informationen sind anders als normale, insbesondere private Güter, was bei der ökonomischen Analyse zu berücksichtigen ist. An den Beispielen Wissenschaft und Internet werden einige Besonderheiten von Informationen vorgestellt und Folgerungen daraus gezogen.

The federal-state system of unemployment insurance (UI) in the United States was established by the Social Security Act of 1935 during the Great Depression. Under the program, states provide temporary partial wage replacement to involuntarily unemployed workers with significant labor force...

We set up a two-country, regional model of trade in financial services. Competitive firms in each country manufacture untraded consumer goods in an uncertain productive environment, borrowing funds from a bank in either the home or the foreign market. Duopolistic banks can choose their levels of...

State-owned banks may help to soften the financing constraints of public sector entities and consequently become a factor that hampers fiscal discipline. Using a panel dataset, we find that a larger presence of state-owned banks in the banking system is associated with more credit to the public...

It is often said that the private sector is in a good position to manage project costs and meet deadlines, but not, generally, to fund or finance projects. The underlying argument runs as follows: because the interest rate on government borrowings (the government's financing cost) is lower than...

In this paper, we study the problem of potential premium losses when the premiums of guarantees of long maturities are collected periodically throughout the duration of the guarantee. Using a ratings based approach, we show how to price the risk of future premium losses and we assess the size of...