This paper presents a model of bank risk taking and government guarantees. Levered banks take excessive risk, as their actions are not fully priced at the margin by debt holders. The impact of government guarantees on bank risk taking depends critically on the portion of bank investors that can...

The recent global financial crisis has ignited a debate on whether easy monetary conditions can lead to greater bank risk-taking. We study this issue in a model of leveraged financial intermediaries that endogenously choose the riskiness of their portfolios. When banks can adjust their capital...

Many acquisitions are conducted by clubs, i.e., coalitions of acquirers that submit a single bid. We present a novel analysis of club bidding where the club creates value by aggregating, at least partially, bidders' values. We show that club formation can lead to higher acquisition prices when...

In a model with bankruptcy costs and segmented deposit and equity markets, we endogenize the cost of equity and deposit finance for banks. Despite risk neutrality, equity capital earns a higher expected return than direct investment in risky assets. Banks hold positive capital to reduce...

The recent global financial crisis has brought the debate on how interest rates affect bank risk-taking to center stage. Proponents of this new risk-taking channel of monetary policy have argued that the low interest–rate environment in the run-up to the crisis may have created incentives for...

Evidence indicates that private equity funds, unlike mutual funds, deliver persistent abnormal returns and that the top performing funds are often oversubscribed. Why do private equity funds appear to leave money on the table, rather than increasing fund size? We argue that private equity funds...