This paper studies the role of leasing of productive assets. When capital is leased (or rented), it is more easily repossessed and hence leasing has higher debt capacity and relaxes financing constraints. However, leasing gives rise to an agency problem with regard to the care with which the...

This paper studies the financing role of leasing and secured lending. We argue that the benefit of leasing is that repossession of a leased asset is easier than foreclosure on the collateral of a secured loan, which implies that leasing has higher debt capacity than secured lending. However,...

Time inconsistency provides a motivation for linear Ramsey taxation in a Mirrleesian economy. Moreover, such a motivation overturns some classic results from the Ramsey taxation literature; specifically, indirect taxation may neither be useless (i.e., redundant) nor uniform.

Household risk management, that is, households' insurance against adverse shocks to income, assets, and financing needs, is limited and often completely absent, in particular for poor households. We explain this basic pattern in household insurance in an infinite horizon model in which...

This paper provides a theory of government intervention, such as government ownership, regulation, mandatory public schooling, subsidies, and industrial policy, as an optimal policy response due to the inability to commit not to expropriate private investment or bail agents out. If the...

This paper develops a dynamic model of the capital structure based on the need to collateralize loans with tangible assets. The model provides a unified theory of optimal firm financing in terms of the optimal capital structure, investment, leasing, and risk management policy. Tangible assets...

In the wake of the 2008 housing bust, Single Family Rental (SFR) strategies have become popular investment vehicles for private equity funds and hedge funds. Industry estimates place the number of homes purchased by SFR investors from 2011-2013 at over 350,000, which is about 10% of all...