How can fire sales for financial assets happen when the economy contains well capitalized, but non-specialist investors? Our explanation combines rational expectations equilibrium and "lemons" models. When specialist (informed) market participants are liquidity-constrained, prices become less...

When should we expect bubbles? Can levered intermediaries bid up risky asset prices through asset substitution? We study an economy with financial intermediaries that issue debt and equity to buy risky assets. Asset substitution alone cannot cause bubbles because it is priced into the...

Will arbitrage capital flow into markets experiencing shocks, mitigating adverse effects on price efficiency? Not necessarily. In a dynamic model with privately informed capital-constrained arbitrageurs, price efficiency plays a dual role, determining both the profitability of new arbitrage and...

A commitment to an ex-post inefficient bailout can be ex-ante optimal because it can mitigate rollover problems without an actual bailout. Reinforcement between illiquidity and insolvency create beneficial multiplier effects that overwhelm the adverse effect of moral hazard. Committing to bail...

We show that stock-based CEO compensation can create a "race to the bottom" among firms that escalates short-termist pressure. More informative stock prices reduce the agency cost of incentivizing managers. Also, shortening a firm's project maturity improves stock price informativeness by...

This paper provides a microfounded information acquisition technology based on a simple framework with information search. When searchable information is limited, an agent encounters increasingly more redundant information in his search for new information. Redundancy slows down the learning...