We study the design of institutions as a framework for regulating innovative activity in the private sector given the informational constraints faced by the social planner. Innovation in the private sector by financial institutions and manufacturing firms imposes important positive and negative...

We model the vulnerability of an economy to a financial crisis as arising from the interaction of the degree of economic specialization and the intermediated financing of the investment opportunities. The probability of a financial crisis is shown to increase in the degree of economic...

This paper examines the effect of global diversification on firm value using a dataset of U.S. firms from 1994-2002. We document that global diversification enhances firm value. Specifically, we find Tobin's q, our proxy for firm value increases with foreign sales (measured as a fraction of the...

In a setting where corporate investment imposes positive externalties, the social impact of corporations depends on the sharing rule between the owners of the corporation and non-financial claimants. We examine the role of law and organizational form in altering the sharing rule. Since the legal...

This paper examines the incentive structure underlying the current features of bank regulation, particularly the role of prompt corrective action, capital requirements and mandatory restrictions on asset choice as primary tools to control risk-shifting incentives of depository institutions. We...

This paper examines the incentive structure underlying the current features of bank regulation, particularly the role of prompt corrective action, capital requirements and mandatory restrictions on asset choice as primary tools to control risk-shifting incentives of depository institutions. We...

This paper surveys the empirical and theoretical literature on the mechanisms of corporate governance. We focus on the internat mechanisms of corporate governance (e.g., arising from conflicts of interests between managers and equityholders, equityholders and creditors, and capital contributors...

This paper examines the incentive structure underlying the current features of bank regulation. We show that capital regulation has limited effectiveness, given the observed high leverage ratios of banks. We propose instead a more direct and effective mechanism of influencing incentives through...

We examine the response of equity mutual fund flows to sovereign rating changes in a wide sample of countries during the crisis prone years from 1996-2002. We find that Sovereign downgrades are strongly associated with outflows of capital from the downgraded country while improvements in a...

This paper examines the informational efficiency of loans relative to bonds surrounding loan default dates and bond default dates. We examine this issue using a unique dataset of daily secondary market prices of loans over the11/1999-06/2002 period.(...)