CEO contractual protection, in forms of CEO employment agreements and CEO severance pay agreements, is prevalent among S&P 1500 firms. While prior research has examined the impact of these agreements on corporate decisions from shareholders’ perspective, there is little research on the impact...

We examine the role of collateral in a dynamic model of optimal credit contracts in which a borrower values both housing and non-housing consumption. The borrower's private information about his income is the only friction. An optimal contract is collateralized when in some state, some portion...

I study the conditions under which assets are sold or used as collateral. Secured loans can be optimal by reducing the lender's incentives to acquire costly information about the future value of collateral assets. Furthermore, when the borrower has incentives to falsify the assets' quality, the...