This article reverses the standard conclusion that asymmetric information plus competition results in insufficient insurance provision. Risk-tolerant individuals take few precautions and are disinclined to insure, but they are drawn into a pooling equilibrium by the low premiums created by the...

Equilibrium credit rationing, in the sense of Stiglitz and Weiss (1981), implies the borrower faces an infinite marginal cost of funds. Infinitessimily delaying the project to accumulate more wealth is therefore advantageous to the borrower. As a result, the well-known conditions for credit...

Compensation schemes often reward success but do not penalize failure. Fixed salaries with stock options or bonuses have this feature. Yet the standard principal–agent model implies that pay is normally monotonically increasing in performance. This paper shows that, under loss aversion, there...

Executive stock options reward success but do not penalise failure. In contrast, the standard principalagent model implies that pay is normally monotonically increasing in performance. This paper shows that, under loss aversion, the use of carrots but not sticks is a feature of an optimal...

Equilibrium credit rationing in the sense of Stiglitz and Weiss (1981) implies the marginal cost of funds to the borrower is infinite. So borrowers have an overwhelming incentive to cut their loan by a dollar and thereby avoiding being rationed. Ways of doing this include scaling down the...

The paper presents an analysis of the impact of pension plan funding on workers’ saving and portfolio behaviour. It shows that the impact of pension plan funding and asset allocation on the economy’s technology choices depends upon the constraints facing worker’s in the capital market. The...

A number of authors have noted that when a firm issues risky debt in the absence of binding state-contingent contracts, the maximize-present-value rule becomes ambiguous. This paper shows that incomplete (asymmetric) information can explain why the firm will make value-maximizing decisions when...

The standard theory of capital structure argues that firms trade off the tax advantage of debt against ba nkruptcy costs. R. A. Haugen and L. W. Senbet (1978) pointed out that there is a problem with this theory: if bankruptcy involves deadweig ht costs, shareholders and bondholders have an...

This paper examines banks' provision of liquidity to depositors and provision of loans. The problem identified is that banks may not be able to provide new funds for borrowers who are short of cash, because either the return on investments is poor, or because depositors withdraw more funds than...