We study the quot;efficient marketsquot; paradigm in the context of agency relations: principal-investors want to monitor and compensate their agent-traders using market security prices in quot;mark-to-marketquot; contracts. The view of each principal is that market prices aggregate the...

We analyze the interaction between managerial decisions and firm value/asset prices by embedding the standard agency model of the firm into an otherwise standard asset pricing model. When the manager-agent's compensation depends on the firm's stock price performance, stock prices are set to...

quot;Risk managementquot; in securities markets refers to the oversight of portfolio managers and professional traders when they trade on behalf of investors in security markets. Monitoring of their trading performance, profit and loss, and risk-taking behavior, is measured by principals using...

Private information about prospective borrowers produced by a bank can affect rival lenders due to a quot;winner%u2019s cursequot; effect. Strategic interaction between banks with respect to the intensity of costly information production results in endogenous credit cycles, periodic quot;credit...

In the last forty or so years the U.S. financial system has morphed from a mostly insured retail deposit-based system into a system with significant amounts of wholesale short-term debt that relies on collateral, and in particular Treasuries, which have a convenience yield. In the new economy...

In the last forty or so years the U.S. financial system has morphed from a mostly insured retail deposit-based system into a system with significant amounts of wholesale short-term debt that relies on collateral, and in particular Treasuries, which have a convenience yield. In the new economy...

Based on archival and survey data we show that the maturity of U.S. business loans has been continuously increasing since the mid-1930s when banks invented the term loan. Concurrently, bank innovation first involved the invention of credit analysis and covenant design. Later, bank innovation...