We develop a theoretical model where a redistribution of bank capital (e.g., due to reckless trading and/or faulty risk management) leads to a “freeze” of the interbank market. The fire-sale market plays a central role in spreading the crisis to the real economy. In crisis, credit rationing...

We develop a theory of sovereign borrowing where default penalties are not implementable. We show that when debt is held by both domestic and foreign agents, the median voter might have an interest in serving it. Our theory has important practical implications regarding (a) the role of financial...

We analyze exchange-rate management by the central bank when it makes the FX market for the sake of social-welfare objectives. It is assumed that markets are incomplete, so that agents are exposed to exchange-rate volatility against which they cannot fully hedge. It follows that the central bank...

The 2008 financial crisis heightened concerns about contagion across high leverage investors. Some have suggested that segmenting markets into stand alone units may contribute to financial stability and enhance social welfare. We provide a welfare analysis of segmentation policies in a two...

This paper investigates the incentives of investors to set up an actively managed fund in an emerging market or asset class. The analysis highlights the role of agency problems between fund managers and investors in determining this entry decision. It is shown that investors may wish to set up a...

This paper explores the welfare implications of a securities transaction tax when informed traders act under short-term objectives. The model presented features speculators who can trade on information of differing time horizons, trade by fully rational uninformed agents, endogenous asset prices...

This paper shows that investors may want fund managers to acquire and trade on short-term instead of more profitable long-term information. This improves learning about managerial ability from performance observations, for two reasons. Firstly, short-term information is of higher quality, which...

In this paper we show that profitable market manipulation via trade is possible if prices perform an allocational role. If market prices affect the real value of an asset (e.g. because they contain information relevant to a firm's investment decisions), a potentially informed speculator may wish...