We study a competitive model in which debt-financed firms may default in some states of nature. Incomplete markets prevent firms from hedging the risk of asset firesales when markets are illiquid. This is the only friction in the model and the only cost of default. The anticipation of such...

In the final sections of the paper we introduce informational asymmetries between the decision maker in the firm (e.g., the manager) and shareholders or equityholders, as in standard corporate finance models. We show that the unanimity and constrained efficiency properties continue to hold with...