This paper examines the role of credit market competition in the dynamic of capital accumulation. It is shown that the lending relationship problem which seems to characterize competitive credit markets can have negative repercussions for capital accumulation. In contrast, monopoly power in...

We develop a model of commodity money and use it to analyze the following two questions motivated by issues in monetary history: What are the conditions under which Gresham's Law holds? And, what are the mechanics of a debasement (lowering the metallic content of coins)? The model contains light...

Profitability is a central concern when governments provide guarantees to increase the flow of funds to disadvantaged groups. We examine the profitability of small business investment companies (SBICs) that are chartered and regulated by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) to finance...

We examine the empirical evidence on the expectation hypothesis of the term structure of interest rates in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany using the Campbell-Shiller (1991) regressions and a vector-autoregressive methodology. We argue that anomalies in the U.S. term structure,...

At yearend 1991, Congress enacted fundamental deposit insurance reform for banks and thrifts in the FDIC Improvement Act (FDICIA). This reform followed the failure of more than 2,000 depository institutions in the 1980s. Many of these failed because of the incentive incompatibility of the...

This paper examines the changes in trading activity around stock splits, and its impact on both the volatility and the bid-ask spread. After a stock split, there is a significant increase in the volatility and the spread, even after controlling for the effects of microstructure biases like price...

This paper examines the implications of bankruptcy law for owner managed firms. These firms are typically (i) smaller, (ii) their value is closely tied to the skills of the owner manager, and (iii) the owner manager represents a feasible source of capital contributions if the firm is in...