How do regulators design bank capital requirements when banks can misreport the value of their assets? We show that the answer depends critically on the existence of secondary markets for bank assets. Without secondary markets, capital requirements based on banks' reporting are more socially...

We model the failed bank resolution process as a repeated game between a utility-maximizing government resolution authority (RA) and a profit-maximizing banking industry. Limits to resolution technology and political/economic pressure create incentives for the RA to bail out failed complex...

We study the negative feedback loop between the aggregate default rate and the efficacy of enforcement in a model of debt-financed entrepreneurial activity. The novel feature of our model is that enforcement capacity is accumulated ex ante and thus subject to depletion ex post. We characterize...

We analyze under what conditions credit markets are efficient in providing loans to entrepreneurs who can start a new project after previous failure. An entrepreneur of uncertain talent chooses the riskiness of her project. If banks cannot perfectly observe the risk of previous projects, two...