We propose a model in which firms involved in trading securities overinvest in financial expertise. Intermediaries or traders in the model meet and bargain over a financial asset. As in the bargaining model in Dang (2008), counterparties endogenously decide whether to acquire information, which...

We show that firms intermediating trade have incentives to overinvest in financial expertise, and that these investments can be destabilizing. Financial expertise in our model improves firms' ability to accurately estimate value when trading a security. It creates adverse selection, which under...

By modeling the market for IPOs as a repeated game with imperfect monitoring, we establish that collusion among underwriters explains the concentration of spreads at 7%, along with other characters of the data on spreads. Furthermore, the structure of optimal spreads in the model explains the...

We analyze the determinants of covenant structure in private debt contracts. While previous studies have demonstrated a relationship between firm characteristics and the overall strictness of loan contracts, few studies have examined why covenants are written on a range of accounting variables...

Private debt contracts tend to have covenants that restrict future investment, restrict capital structure decisions, or impose thresholds for cash flows or other performance measures. While previous studies have demonstrated a relationship between firm characteristics and the overall strictness...

We estimate a dynamic model of the decision to close a troubled bank. Regulators trade off an aversion to closing banks against the risk that allowing a bank to continue will raise the eventual costs to the deposit insurance fund. Using a conditional choice probability approach, we estimate the...