Municipal bonds trade in opaque, decentralized broker-dealer markets in which price information is costly to gather. Whether dealers in such a market operate competitively is an empirical issue, but a difficult one to study because data in such markets is generally not centrally recorded. We...

Prior to the subprime crisis, mortgage brokers charged higher percentage fees for loans that turned out to be riskier ex post, even when conditioning on other risk characteristics. High conditional fees reveal borrower attributes that are associated with high borrower risk, such as suboptimal...

We quantify the effect of financial leverage on stock return volatility in a dynamic general equilibrium economy with debt and equity claims. The effect of financial leverage is studied both at a market and a firm level where the firm is exposed to both idiosyncratic and market risk. In a...

We study the way in which information about corporate decisions is reflected in stock prices. In the corporate finance literature a typical assumption is that managers have superior information that is revealed to the market by their corporate decisions and personal equity trades. In contrast,...

We use a calibrated dynamic general equilibrium economy with heterogeneous beliefs to study the effects of a short--selling constraint on stock prices, stock price volatility, and interest rates. We find large stock price and volatility effects from heterogeneous beliefs, without introducing...

Asset prices are risky, in part, because of uncertainty about the preferences of potential counterparties and the terms-of-trade at which they will be willing to provide liquidity in the future. We call such randomness liquidity risk. We argue that liquidity risk is an important source of...

We analyze the costs and benefits of providing and using liquidity in a limit order market. Using a large and comprehensive data set which details the complete histories of orders and trades on the Vancouver Stock Exchange, we are able to model the order flow and measure market liquidity as it...

Typically, venture capital contracts feature stage financing where both parties commit to prohibiting {\em de novo} financing at each stage. The objective of this paper is to explain how these long--term contracts deal with entrepreneurial short--termism. We study an environment where...

We provide a random variable characterization of the necessary and sufficient conditions for a shift of the distribution of rate of return on the risky asset in the two asset portfolio problem to reduce demand for all risk--averse expected utility maximizing investors. We provide random variable...