We present an overlapping generations model with spatial separation and agents who face liquidity risk to investigate the widely held belief that financial intermediaries exist because they save on transaction costs. We find that if agents only use a pure exchange mechanism, they engage in...

We propose the Volume Coefficient of Variation (VCV) as a new and simple measure of information asymmetry in security markets. We use a microstructure model to demonstrate that VCV is strictly increasing in the proportion of informed trade. Empirically, we obtain VCV from daily observations of...

We analyze an overlapping generations economy where agents interact to share liquidity risk. We show that a pure exchange economy has excessive trade in equilibrium because agents interact to rebalance their portfolios. Intergenerational financial intermediaries reduce the number of interactions...

We investigate the valuation of platform investment, such as asoftware operating system or anInternet portal WebPage. Platform investment is the creation of aninnovative distribution andproduction infrastructure, which increases access to customers; as aresult it reduces entry costs inrelated...

Equity carve outs, the partial listing of a corporate subsidiary, appear to be transitory arrangements, usually dissolved within a few years by either a complete sale or a buy back. Why do firms perform expensive listings just to reverse them thereafter? We interpret carve outs of a production...