We examine the coexistence of banks and financial markets, studyinga credit market where the qualities of investment projects are notobservable and the investment decisions of entrepreneurs are not contractible...

Using a dataset of Home Equity Loan securities issued up to June 2007 and rated by Moody’s and/or S&P, this paper investigates how discretionary ratings are priced by the market. To this end, a measure of relative rating inflation (Rating Bias) observable at issuance is proposed. The way...

This paper studies a credit market with adverse selection and moral hazard where sufficient sorting is impossible. The crucial novel feature is the competition between lenders in their choice of contracts offered. The quality of investment projects is unobservable by banks and entrepreneurs’...

This study of initial public offerings (IPOs) carried out on the Berlin and London stock exchanges between 1900 and 1913 casts doubt on the received “law and finance” wisdom that legally mandated investor protection is pivotal to the development of capital markets. IPOs that resulted in...

The intention of regulation is to protect the vulnerable. However, unintended results of regulation can cause the opposite occur. In its present form, the proposed Volcker Rule prohibits proprietary trading and has the potential of continuing the liquidity crisis that aided in the degradation of...

Over 50 countries have introduced regulatory sandboxes to foster financial innovation. This paper conducts the first evaluation of their ability to improve fintechs' access to capital. Exploiting the staggered introduction of the UK sandbox, we compare firms in earlier to those in later cohorts....

We analyze real economic consequences of financing with (mispriced) utility tokens that give access to consumption utility and are traded on a secondary market. Projects can be financed by equity or by selling tokens. In a baseline analysis, efficient projects prefer equity, while inefficient...

This essay, based on the author's presentation last September to the annual meeting of the North American Securities Administration Association (NASAA), addresses several issues related to Rule 506, the most widely-used of the SEC's transactional exemptions from federal registration of...

As observed in at least the last two decades, financial engineering has not only changed the way in which business is conducted in the finance world, but also the daily life of the average citizen in the leading economies. Structured products have been deemed weapons of mass destruction in some...