Financial Intermediaries and Liquidity Creation.

Trading losses associated with information asymmetries can be mitigated by designing securities that split the cash flows of underlying assets. These securities, which can arise endogenously, have values that do not depend on the information known only to informed agents. Bank debt (deposits) is an example of this type of liquid security that protects relatively uninformed agents, and the authors provide a rationale for deposit insurance in this content. High-grade corporate debt and government bonds are other examples, implying that a money market mutual fund based payments system may be an alternative to one based on insured bank deposits. Copyright 1990 by American Finance Association.