This paper studies asset markets where buyers of assets do not inherit private information from previous owners and must learn asset quality over time. Imperfect information transmission reduces asymmetric information, but also reduces the trading volume, prices and efficiency. This result is...

We examine how a combination of credit market and asset quality information can jointly be used in assessing bank franchise value. We find that expectations of future credit demand and future asset quality explain contemporaneous bank franchise value, indicative of the feedback in credit market...

Dominant investors can influence the publicly available information about firms by affecting the cost of information collection. Under strategic competition, transparency results in higher variability of profits and output. Thus lenders prefer less transparency, since this protects firms when in...

In this paper, we discuss the consequences of imperfect information about financial frictions on the macroeconomy. We rely on a New Keynesian DSGE model with a banking sector in which we introduce imperfect information about a limited enforcement problem. Bank managers divert resources and can...

Asset prices undergo long swings that revolve around benchmark levels. In currency markets, fluctuations involve real exchange rates that are highly persistent and that move in near-parallel fashion with nominal rates. The inability to explain these two regularities with one model has been...

The crisis of 2007-09 has been characterized by a sudden freeze in the market for short-term, secured borrowing. We present a model that can explain a sudden collapse in the amount that can be borrowed against finitely-lived assets with little credit risk. The borrowing in this model takes the...

This paper studies contagion and market freezes caused by uncertainty in financial network structures and provides theoretical guidance for central banks. We establish a formal model to demonstrate that, in a financial system where financial institutions are interconnected, a negative shock to...

Mortgage loans are leading examples of transactions where experts on one side of the market take advantage of consumers' lack of knowledge and experience. We study the compensation that borrowers pay to mortgage brokers for assistance from application to closing. Two findings support the...