In choosing transparency, firms must trade off the benefits from better access to finance against the cost of a greater tax burden. We study this trade-off in a model with distortionary taxes and endogenous rationing of external finance. The evidence from two different data sets, one formed only...

We propose a new estimator of multivariate ex-post volatility that is robust to microstructure noise and asynchronous data timing. The method is based on Fourier domain techniques, which have been widely used in discrete time series analysis. The advantage of this method is that it does not...

We study managerial incentive provision under moral hazard in a firm subject to stochastic growth opportunities. In our model, managers are dismissed after poor performance, but also when an alternative manager is more capable of growing the firm. The optimal contract may involve managerial...

We analyze how asymmetric information and imperfect competition a®ect liquidity and asset prices. Our model has three periods: agents are identical in the ¯rst, become heterogeneous and trade in the second, and consume asset payo®s in the third. We show that asymmetric information in the...

We study economies of scale in banking by viewing banks as combinations of financial and human capital that create rents which accrue to investors and bankers. Applying this approach to annual data of US bank holding companies since 1990, we find much stronger evidence of economies of scale in...

We study dynamic general equilibrium in one-tree and two-trees Lucas economies with one consumption good and two CRRA investors with heterogeneous risk aversions and portfolio constraints. We provide a tractable characterization of equilibrium without relying on the assumption of logarithmic...

We develop a model of securitized (Originate, then Distribute) lending, in which both publicly observed aggregate shocks to values of securitized loan portfolios, and later some asymmetrically observed discernment of varying qualities of subsets thereof, play crucial roles. We nd that...

We propose a new theory of suboptimal risk-taking based on contractual externalities. We examine an industry with a continuum of _rms. Each _rm's manager exerts costly hidden e_ort. The productivity of e_ort is subject to systematic shocks. Firms' stock prices reect their performance relative to...

This paper explores how different types of financial regulation could combat many of the phenomena that were observed in the financial crisis of 2007 to 2009. The primary contribution is the introduction of a model that includes both a banking system and a “shadow banking system” that each...

We study a model where a capital provider learns from the price of a firm’s security in deciding how much capital to provide for new investment. This feedback effect from the financial market to the investment decision gives rise to trading frenzies, where speculators all wish to trade like...