We develop a model in order to explore how a bank’s equity stake in a competitor of a borrower affects the financing relationship with the borrower and product market outcomes. The bank’s affiliation with the competitor can give rise to antior pro–competitive effects. Large equity stakes...

This paper develops a contracting framework in order to explore the effects of credit derivatives on banks’ incentives to monitor loans, their incentives to intervene, and, ultimately, borrowers’ incentives to perform. We show that (i) credit derivatives with short term maturity strengthen...

We explore the joint determination of product differentiation strategy and corporate leverage in a setting where (i) product differentiation is valued by customers; (ii) debt is necessary to discipline managers; and (iii) liquidation is costly for customers, in particular, when products are...

We develop a model in order to explore how a bank's equity stake in a competitor of a borrower affects the financing relationship with the borrower and product market outcomes. The bank's affiliation with the competitor can give rise to anti- or pro-competitive effects. Large equity stakes can...

This paper studies the interplay between corporate leverage and product pricing when liquidation is costly for customers. I develop a model which illustrates that highly leveraged firms can enter a vicious circle in which financial distress and sales drops are re--enforcing. There is a "good''...

This paper studies how sunk costs affect a financially constrained incumbent's ability to deter entry into its market. Sunk costs make it less attractive to the incumbent to accommodate entry by liquidating assets in place and exiting the market. This may render entry by a prospective rival...

We embed proprietary trading into a model of bank lending. Opportunities to engage in purely speculative trading can harm the real economy. This is because banks, when devoting cheap but scarce deposits to lending rather than to gambling, must be compensated for giving up gambling rents. This...

I study a model of market-liquidity provision by levered intermediaries that, besides operating trading desks, run deposit-taking franchises. Levered intermediaries’ heightened incentive to absorb risk helps to counteract liquidity-provision frictions that, in an unlevered economy, would lead...

We study whether the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) of 2002 made firms less opaque. For identification, we use a difference-in-differences estimation approach and compare EU firms that are cross-listed in the US—and therefore subject to SOX—with comparable EU firms that are not cross-listed. We...

Strategic investors, such as corporate venture capitalists, engage in the financing of start-up firms to complement their core businesses and to facilitate the internalization of externalities. We argue that while strategic objectives make it more worthwhile for an investor to elicit high...