We document empirical support for a key micro-level channel --- innovation by young, private firms --- through which financial sector deregulation affects economic growth. We find that intrastate banking deregulation, which increased the local market power of banks, decreased the level and risk...

We develop a structural model to quantitatively analyze the effects of asymmetric beliefs and agency conflicts on capital structure. Capital structure reflects the dynamic tradeoff between the positive incentive effects of managerial optimism and the negative effects of risk-sharing costs....

We examine the dynamic forecasting behavior of security analysts in response to their prior performance relative to their peers. In a multi-period Bayesian learning model where an analyst and her employer (the investment bank or brokerage house) bargain over the surplus that she generates in...

We theoretically and empirically investigate the effects of manager-specific characteristics on capital structure. We develop a dynamic structural model in which a manager affects a firm's earnings through her ability and effort. The manager receives dynamic incentives through explicit contracts...

We develop a unified model of the interactions among investors, fund companies (represented by fund advisors) and fund managers. We show that the interplay between a manager's incentives from her compensation structure and career concerns leads to a non-monotonic (approximately U-shaped)...

We develop an analytically tractable general equilibrium model to analyze the welfare effects of CDS trading and CDS regulation under aggregate uncertainty. If available equity capital is below a threshold, any equilibrium of the basic economy with no CDS markets features firm default and...