Risk is endogenous. Equilibrium risk is the fixed point of the mapping that takes perceived risk to actual risk. When risk-neutral traders operate under Value-at-Risk constraints, market conditions exhibit signs of fluctuating risk appetite and amplification of shocks through feedback effects....

 The purpose of this paper is to explore financial instability in this case due to a housing crisis and defaults on mortgages. The model incorporates heterogeneous banks and households. Mortgages are secured by collateral, which is equal to the amount of housing which agents purchase....

Until recently, financial services regulation remained largely segmented along national lines. The integration of financial markets, however, calls for a systematic and coherent approach to regulation. This paper studies the effect of market based regulation on the proper functioning of the...

We survey theoretical developments in the literature on the limits of arbitrage. This literature investigates how costs faced by arbitrageurs can prevent them from eliminating mispricings and providing liquidity to other investors. Research in this area is currently evolving into a broader...

In this paper, we investigate whether U.S. bank holding companies (BHCs) with strong and independent risk management functions had lower aggregate risk and downside risk. We hand-collect information on the organization structure of the 75 largest publicly-listed BHCs, and use this information to...

We study technology adoption, risk and expected returns using a dynamic equilibrium model with production. The central insight is that optimal technology adoption is an important driving force of the cross section of stock returns. The model predicts that technology adopting firms are less risky...

We study the value of information in a competitive economy in which agents trade in asset markets to reallocate risk. We characterize the kinds of information that allow a welfare improvement when portfolios can be freely reallocated. We then compare competitive equilibria before and after a...

This paper examines the relationship between executive cash compensation and company performance for a sample of large UK companies, focusing in particular on the financial services industry, since incentive misalignment has been blamed as one of the factors causing the global financial crisis...

In this paper we develop a simple theoretical model to analyze the impact of institu- tional herding on asset prices. A growing empirical literature has come to the intriguing conclusion that institutional herding positively predicts short-term returns but nega- tively predicts long-term...

In principle, credit rating agencies are supposed to be impartial observers that bridge the gap between private information of issuers and the information available to the wider pool of investors. However, since the 1970s, rating agencies have relied on an issuer-pay model, creating a conflict...