This paper develops a hierarchical principal-agent model to explore the influence of corruption, bribery, and politically provided oversight of production on the efficiency and level of output of some publicly provided good. Under full information, an honest politician acheives the first best...

Increasing inter-bank lending has an ambiguous impact on financial stability. Two opposing effects have been identified: promoting stability through risk sharing and providing a channel through which contagion may spread. In this paper we identify the conditions under which each relationship...

This paper considers the stability of a financial system in which heterogenous banks interact through a lending market. We analyse a discrete time model in which households and banks are located on a circular city. Households present banks with risky investment opportunities, which banks fund...

Using a suitably modified locational model of banking, we examine the influence of institutions, such as deposit contract enforcement, in explaining the share of government owned banks in the banking system. We present cross-country evidence suggesting that institutional factors are relatively...