A popular view of limited liability in financial contracting is that it is the result of societal preferences agnainst excessive penalties. the view of most financial economists is instead that limited liability emerged as an optimal institution when, in the absence of a clear limit on economic...

The meltdown in residential real-estate prices that commenced in 2006 resulted in unprecedented mortgage delinquency rates. Until mid-2009, lenders and servicers pursued their own individual loss mitigation practices without being significantly influenced by government intervention. Using a...

An important theoretical literature motivates collateral as a mechanism that mitigates adverse selection, credit rationing, and other inefficiencies that arise when borrowers hold ex ante private information. There is no clear empirical evidence regarding the central implication of this...

Collateral is a widely used, but not well understood, debt-contracting feature. Two broad strands of theoretical literature explain collateral as arising from the existence of either ex ante private information or ex post incentive problems between borrowers and lenders. However, the extant...

This paper applies regression analysis to investigate the fundamental factors of the variation of CDS index tranches. The sample comprises daily data on the tranche premia of the European iTraxx and North American CDX index from the start of the market in summer 2004 to January 2008. I estimate...

We study the functioning of secured and unsecured inter-bank markets in the presence of credit risk. The model generates empirical predictions that are in line with developments during the 2007-2009 financial crises. Interest rates decouple across secured and unsecured markets following an...

This paper proposes and tests a theory of credit-driven asset bubbles which are neutral in their real effects. When a lender such as a government, central bank, or banking sector is willing to lend infinitely against collateral, explosive asset bubbles can form which exactly offset a bubble in...