Debt maturity influences debt overhang: the reduced incentive for highly- levered borrowers to make real investments because some value accrues to debt. Reducing maturity can increase or decrease overhang even when shorter-term debt's value depends less on firm value. Future overhang is more...

This article uses narrative and numerical examples to exposit the ideas in Diamond and Dybvig (1983) and some recent extensions of their model. Banks create demand deposits to provide investors with liquid assets. Demand deposits work very well when investors forecast that banks will survive,...

When a bank is a relationship lender, its financial health affects its borrowers' access to credit. If regulators or depositors might close a bank, it will take any action necessary to remain open. This leads to excessive foreclosure of the bank's relationship-based loans or to the bank's...

Using a simplified version of the model developed in his 'Financial Intermediation and Delegated Monitoring,' the author explains why investors, instead of lending directly, first lend to banks who then lend to borrowers. His model does three things. It identifies the financial technology that...