Do rating agencies increase or decrease financial market stability? This paper analyzes whether credit rating agencies may help to avoid inefficient self-fulfilling credit defaults. If investors follow risk-dominant strategies, we show that rating announcements and investors' private information...

Small and medium-sized firms often obtain capital via a mixture of relationship and arm's-length bank lending. We show that such heterogeneous multiple bank financing leads to a lower probability of ineefficient credit foreclosure than both monopoly relationship lending and homogeneous multiple...

This paper studies the effects that heterogeneous multiple bank financing has on a firm's risk- and information-policy, particularly with respect to credit renegotiation efficiency. We find that a significant, yet limited, degree of relationship lending enables firms with high asset specificity...

This paper studies optimal risk-taking and information disclosure by firms that obtain financing from both a 'relationship' bank and 'arm's-length' banks. We find that firm decisions are asymmetrically influenced by the degree of heterogeneity among banks: lowly-collateralized firms vary optimal...

In this paper, we propose a model of credit rating agencies using the global games framework to incorporate information and coordination problems. We introduce a refined utility function of a credit rating agency that, additional to reputation maximization, also embeds aspects of competition and...

Market participants often suspect that large traders have a disproportionate effect on financial markets, increasing the aggressiveness of market responses. Prior studies have shown that the impact of a large trader on a currency crisis depends positively on his size and informational position....

Stabilität versus Aktualität – Wann sind stabile Agency-Ratings marktbasierten Bewertungen vorzuziehen? Die Arbeit analysiert auf theoretischer Basis Vor- und Nachteile einer langfristig stabilen versus aktuellen, volatileren Informationsbasis anhand strategischer Portfolioentscheidungen....

This paper examines the effect of imperfect labor market competition on the efficiency of compensation schemes in a setting with moral hazard and risk-averse agents who have private information on their ability. Two heterogenous firms - characterized by vertical, respectively horizontal,...

This paper examines the effect of imperfect labor market competition on the efficiency of compensation schemes in a setting with moral hazard, private information and risk-averse agents. Two vertically differentiated firms compete for agents by offering contracts with fixed and variable...

Financial markets are to a very large extent influenced by the advent of information. Such disclosures, however, do not only contain information about fundamentals underlying the markets, but they also serve as a focal point for the beliefs of market participants. This dual role of information...