We consider the impact of mandatory information disclosure on bank safety in a spatial model of banking competition in which a bank’s probability of success depends on the quality of its risk measurement and management systems. Under Basel II capital requirements, this quality is either fully...

According to empirical studies of venture capital finance, the division of control rights between entrepreneur and venture capitalists is often contingent on certain measures of firm performance. If the indicator of the company’s performance (eg earnings before taxes and interest) is low, the...

In most countries, banks’ equity holdings in firms that borrow from then are rather small. In light of the theoretical literature, this is somewhat surprising. For example, according to agency cost models, allowing banks to hold equity would seem to alleviate firms’ asset substitution moral...

This thesis consists of an introductory chapter and four essays on financial contracting theory. In the first essay, we argue that many adverse selection models of standard one-period loan contracts are not robust to changes in market structure. We argue that debt is not an optimal contract in...