Financing Competitive Asset Bids When Information is Asymmetric: The Role of Collateral as a Signal.

In this paper, borrowing agents require capital to finance competitive bids for a single productive asset rather than requiring capital for individual projects. Loan size is no longer effective as a signaling mechanism. Instead, high quality agents will either offer a sufficiently high level of collateral to signal their type or choose to pool with low quality agents. A pooling equilibrium will emerge if the implicit cost of signaling is too high but then high quality borrowers must bid against all borrowers rather than only their own type.