When a nation can finance its investments via foreign-currency denominated debt or domestic-currency claims, what is the optimal capital structure of the nation? Building on the functions of fiat money as both medium of exchange, and store of value like corporate equity, our model connects...

A risk-averse entrepreneur with access to a profitable venture needs to raise funds from investors. She cannot indefinitely commit her human capital to the venture, which limits the firm's debt capacity, distorts investment and compensation, and constrains the entrepreneur's risk-sharing. This...

We study the resolution of global banks by national regulators. Single-point-of-entry (SPOE) resolution, where loss-absorbing capital is shared across jurisdictions, is efficient but may not be implementable. First, when expected transfers across jurisdictions are too asymmetric, national...

We estimate institutional investor preferences based on their proxy voting records in publicly listed Russell 3000 firms. We employ a spatial model of proxy voting, the W-NOMINATE method for scaling legislatures, and map institutional investors onto a left-right dimension based on their votes...

We propose a model of bounded rationality based on time-costs of deliberating current and future decisions. We model an individual decision maker%u2019s thinking process as a thought-experiment that takes time and let the decision maker %u201Cthink ahead%u201D about future decision problems in...

We study a dynamic-contracting problem involving risk sharing between two parties -- the Proposer and the Responder -- who invest in a risky asset until an exogenous but random termination time. In any time period they must invest all their wealth in the risky asset, but they can share the...

Commentators have raised concerns about the empty creditor problem that arises when a debtholder has obtained insurance against default but otherwise retains control rights in and outside bankruptcy. We analyze this problem from an ex-ante and ex-post perspective in a formal model of debt with...

Derivative contracts, swaps, and repos enjoy "super-senior" status in bankruptcy: they are exempt from the automatic stay on debt and collateral collection that applies to virtually all other claims. We propose a simple corporate finance model to assess the effect of this exemption on firms'...

This paper examines the relation between ownership, corporate form, and innovation for a cross-section of private and publicly traded innovating firms in the US and 15 European countries. A striking novel observation emerges from our analysis: while most innovating firms in the US are publicly...

We study how relationship lending and transaction lending vary over the business cycle. We develop a model in which relationship banks gather information on their borrowers, which allows them to provide loans for profitable firms during a crisis. Due to the services they provide, operating costs...