This paper examines alternative contracting arrangements available to a firm seeking to finance an investment project. The authors consider the choice between loan contracts with covenants bas ed on noisy indicators of the firm's financial health and loan contra cts enforced by a monitoring...

On September 22-23, 2011, the Research Department and the Payment Cards Center of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia held their sixth joint conference to present and discuss the latest research on consumer credit and payments. Eighty-four participants attended the conference, which...

In traditional banking arrangements, households hold their savings in the form of deposits at the bank, which makes loans to both firms and households and holds these loans to maturity. But in the United States, and to a lesser extent in other developed countries, markets have increasingly taken...