We examine the pervasive view that equity is expensive which leads to claims that high capital requirements are costly and would affect credit markets adversely. We find that arguments made to support this view are either fallacious, irrelevant, or very weak. For example, the return on equity...

In this essay I discuss how theoretical models in finance and economics are used in ways that make them “chameleons” and how chameleons devalue the intellectual currency and muddy policy debates. A model becomes a chameleon when it is built on assumptions with dubious connections to the real...

Spanish Abstract: En este ensayo muestro que los modelos teóricos en finanzas y economía se usan de un modo que los vuelven “camaleones”, y que los camaleones devalúan la moneda intelectual y enturbian los debates de política. Un modelo se convierte en camaleón cuando se basa en...

This paper presents a proposal for improving corporate governance. It is designed to increase incentives for corporations and their leaders to adhere to the constraint that Milton Friedman laid out in his 1970 New York Times article, “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its...

The authors derive a role for inside investors, such as venture capitalists, in resolving various agency problems that arise in a multistage financial contracting problem. Absent an inside investor, the choice of securities is unlikely to reveal all private information and overinvestment may...