We perform an experimental study to assess the effect of complexity on asset trading. We find that higher complexity leads to increased price volatility, lower liquidity, and decreased trade efficiency especially when repeated bargaining takes place. However, the channel through which complexity...

We perform an experimental study of complexity to assess its effect on trading behavior, price volatility, liquidity, and trade efficiency. Subjects were asked to deduce the value of a particular asset from information they were given about the composition and price of several portfolios....

We propose a model in which firms involved in trading securities overinvest in financial expertise. Intermediaries or traders in the model meet and bargain over a financial asset. As in the bargaining model in Dang (2008), counterparties endogenously decide whether to acquire information, which...

By modeling the market for IPOs as a repeated game with imperfect monitoring, we establish that collusion among underwriters explains the concentration of spreads at 7%, along with other characters of the data on spreads. Furthermore, the structure of optimal spreads in the model explains the...

We analyze the determinants of covenant structure in private debt contracts. While previous studies have demonstrated a relationship between firm characteristics and the overall strictness of loan contracts, few studies have examined why covenants are written on a range of accounting variables...

Private debt contracts tend to have covenants that restrict future investment, restrict capital structure decisions, or impose thresholds for cash flows or other performance measures. While previous studies have demonstrated a relationship between firm characteristics and the overall strictness...

Characteristics of the investment banking industry, particularly the extreme concentration of spreads at exactly 7%, seem consistent with some form of collusion through which underwriters can extract surplus from the IPO. I present a model of investment banking that, under the assumption of...

We estimate a dynamic model of the decision to close a troubled bank. Regulators trade off an aversion to closing banks against the risk that allowing a bank to continue will raise the eventual costs to the deposit insurance fund. Using a conditional choice probability approach, we estimate the...

We investigate the competitive effects of spot-price contracting, in which a buyer and seller contract to transact at a future date at the price prevailing in that market at that future date (the ``spot price''); such contracts are ubiquitous in the beef-processing industry, among others. We...

It is a core principle of antitrust law and theory that reduced market concentration lowers the risk of anticompetitive behavior. We demonstrate that this principle is fundamentally incomplete.Traditional models assume that firms interact only as competitors. We examine and model...