We present a model for Financial fragility in which banks are risk-averse portfolio managers and there is uncertainty over risk management parameters. There is a danger of heightened risk aversion and projects in small economies are assumed to be riskier than those in large economies. In this...

We analyse a general equilibrium model in which there is both adverse selection of and moral hazard by banks. The regulator has two tools at her disposal to combat these problems - she can audit banks to learn their type prior to giving them a licence, and she can impose capital adequacy...

In contrast to practice in the U.S., European IPOs are very rarely priced outside the indicative price range, and frequently are priced at its upper bound. We develop a model that provides a rationale for this seemingly inefficient pricing behaviour. The model allows for the practice, observed...

We model the interaction between two economies where banks exhibit both adverse selection and moral hazard and bank regulators try to resolve these problems. We find that liberalising bank capital flows between economies reduces total welfare by reducing the average size and efficiency of the...

We analyse credit market equilibrium when banks screen loan applicants. When banks have a convex cost function of screening, a pure strategy equilibrium exists where banks optimally set interest rates at the same level as their competitors. This result complements Broecker`s (1990) analysis,...

Deposit insurance schemes are becoming increasingly popular around the world and yet there is little understanding of how they should be designed and what their consequences are. In this paper we provide a new rationale for the provision of deposit insurance. We analyse a model in which agents...

We consider an economy in which banks increase social welfare by monitoring but where the verifiable part of banking income is stochastic. Banks abstract non-verifiable returns and this can render banking contracts unattractive to investors. The survival of the banking sector is ensured by a...

In human capital intensive industries where it is difficult to contract upon the training effort of skilled agents a socially suboptimal level of training may occur. We show how partnership organisations can overcome this problem by tying human and financial capital. Partnerships are opaque so...

It is received financial wisdom that when there is free entry by speculators, it is impossible to generate net profits on publicly available information. In this paper we study a version of the standard Kyle (85) model with endogenous information acquisition and we find that equilibria exist...

We analyse a general equilibrium model in which there is both adverse selection of and moral hazard by banks. The regulator has several tools at her disposal to combat these problems. She can audit banks to learn their type prior to giving them a licence, she can audit them ex post to learn the...