The authors examine collateral in a competitive equilibrium in which borrowers can choose hidden actions and may additionally possess hidden knowledge. Apart from explaining the widespread use of collateral despite deadweight costs, they show that an increase in the riskless interest rate causes...

The authors analyze repeated moral hazard with discounting in a competitive credit market with risk neutrality. Even without learning or risk aversion, long-term bank-borrower relationships are welfare enhancing. The main result is that the borrower obtains an infinite sequence of unsecured...

The authors consider the moral hazard in managers undersupplying imperfectly-marketable, firm-specific human capital. Firms may cope by granting long-term wage contracts that protect managers against employment termination. Although ex ante efficient, these contracts may be ex post inefficient...

The authors examine how market structure affects credit allocation under universal risk neutrality and asymmetric information about borrowers. They consider both monopolistic and perf ectly-competitive banks and examine the role of collateral in each ca se. When a bank is a monopolist on the...

This article studies an asymmetric information game with "type convergence," in which, under some realizations of a common uncertainity, inducing informed agents to reveal their types through self-selection by contract choice is either costly or impossible. Under other realizations,...

This paper develops a theory of choice among alternative procedures for distributing cash from corporations to shareholders. Despite the preferential tax treatment of capital gains for individual investors, it is shown that a majority of a firm's shareholders may support a dividend payment for...