Payments technologies pose an economic dilemma: network effects can lead to a small number of dominant platforms, but efforts to increase choice can risk market fragmentation. We examine whether interoperability can help resolve this tension, using data from India's Unified Payments...

Borrowers' use of cashless payments improves their access to capital from FinTech lenders and predicts a lower probability of default. These relationships are stronger for cashless technologies providing more precise information, and for outflows. Cashless payment usage complements other signals...

We propose a unified framework to study liquidity provision by debt-issuing versus equity-issuing financial intermediaries. We show that both types of intermediaries provide liquidity by insuring against idiosyncratic liquidity risks as in Diamond and Dybvig (1983) but with distinct frictions....

The past decade saw the rise of both “founder-friendly” venture financings and non-traditional investors, frequently with liquidity constraints. Using detailed contract data, we study open-end mutual funds investing in private venture-backed firms. We posit an interaction between the classic...

We examine voluntary disclosure when the firm (“sender”) is risk-averse and uncertain about audience preferences. We show that some firms stay silent in equilibrium, in contrast to classic “unravelling” results. Silence reduces the sensitivity of a firm's payoff to audiences'...

Marketplace lending relies on screening and information production by investors, a major deviation from the traditional banking paradigm. Theoretically, the participation of sophisticated investors improves screening outcomes but also creates adverse selection among investors. In maximizing loan...

Using novel contract-level data, we study the recent trend in open-end mutual funds investing in unicorns—highly valued, privately held start-ups—and the consequences of these investments for corporate governance provisions. Larger funds and those with more stable funding are more likely to...

I model an open-end mutual fund investing in illiquid assets and show that the fund's endogenous cash management can generate shareholder runs even with a flexible NAV. The fund optimally re-builds its cash buffers at time t 1 after outflows at t to prevent future forced sales of illiquid...