We propose a novel conceptual approach to transparently characterizing credit market outcomes in economies with multi-dimensional borrower heterogeneity. Based on characterizations of securities' implicit demand for bank equity capital, we obtain closed-form expressions for the composition of credit, including a sufficient statistic for the provision of bank loans, and a novel cross-sectional asset pricing relation for securities held by regulated levered institutions. Our framework sheds light on the compositional shifts in credit prior to the 07/08 financial crisis and the European debt crisis, and can provide guidance on the allocative effects of shocks affecting both banks and the cross-sectional distribution of borrowers.

In this paper, we build a simple formal model of cash holdings that can explain this and other empirical regularities. Our model is based on the well-known "lemons" problem associated with equity issuance. We show that firms with poor growth opportunities and those with excellent opportunities will not hold excess cash, whereas firms with opportunities in the middle range will hold excess cash. We derive empirical implications relating excess cash to the extent of asymmetric information, growth opportunities, value of assets in place, and cash holding costs.

This paper presents a model of contracts for the sale of intellectual property. We explain why many intellectual property contracts are contingent on eventual production or success, even without moral hazard on the part of risk-averse sellers. Our explanation is based on differences of opinion between buyers and sellers with regard to the seller's competence. Unlike signaling models, our framework is founded on learning by buyers and sellers and on the sellers' reputation building. Thus, we are able to derive predictions regarding the impact of the seller's experience on the nature of the contract. In particular, our model predicts that more experienced sellers will be offered a different mix of cash and contingency payments than inexperienced sellers. We also discuss the probability of sales as a function of seller and product characteristics. Some predictions of the theoretical models are supported by an analysis of screenplay sales data.

We propose a tractable framework to examine the system-wide effects of bank capital requirements. In our model, banks can serve a socially beneficial role by financing firms that are credit rationed by public markets, but banks' access to deposit insurance (and implicit debt guarantees) creates socially undesirable risk-shifting incentives. Equity ratio requirements reduce banks' risk-taking incentives, but may also constrain banks' balance sheets. When existing bank capital is sufficiently high, increases in equity-ratio requirements unambiguously improve welfare and the stability of the banking system. However, when bank capital is scarce, increased equity-ratio requirements induce credit rationing of both bank-dependent firms with positive NPV projects and risky firms with negative NPV. In this case, the net effects on welfare and the risk-taking of banks are ambiguous, as they depend on which type of credit rationing dominates. Our model provides conceptual guidance on the cyclicality of optimum capital requirements as well as their dependence on the development of public markets and the cross-sectional distribution of firms.

We propose a tractable general equilibrium framework to analyze the eectiveness of bank capital regulations when banks face competition from public markets. Our analysis shows that increased competition can not only render previously optimal bank capital regulations ineective but also imply that, over some ranges, increases in capital requirements cause more banks to engage in value-destroying risk-shifting. Our model generates a set of novel implications that highlight the dependencies between optimal bank capital regulation and the comparative advantages of various players in the nancial system.

This paper develops a theoretical framework to shed light on variation in credit rating standards over time and across asset classes. Ratings issued by credit rating agencies serve a dual role: they provide information to investors and are used to regulate institutional investors. We show that introducing rating-contingent regulation that favors highly rated securities may increase or decrease rating informativeness, but unambiguously increases the volume of highly rated securities. If the regulatory advantage of highly rated securities is sufficiently large, delegated information acquisition is unsustainable, since the rating agency prefers to facilitate regulatory arbitrage by inflating ratings. Our model relates rating informativeness to the quality distribution of issuers, the complexity of assets, and issuers’ outside options. We reconcile our results with the existing empirical literature and highlight new, testable implications, such as repercussions of the Dodd-Frank Act. & 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

This paper develops a theoretical framework to shed light on variation in credit rating standards over time and across asset classes. Ratings issued by credit rating agencies serve a dual role: they provide information to investors and are used to regulate institutional investors. We show that introducing rating-contingent regulation that favors highly rated securities may increase or decrease rating informativeness, but unambiguously increases the volume of highly rated securities. If the regulatory advantage of highly rated securities is sufficiently large, delegated information acquisition is unsustainable, since the rating agency prefers to facilitate regulatory arbitrage by inflating ratings. Our model relates rating informativeness to the quality distribution of issuers, the complexity of assets, and issuers' outside options. We reconcile our results with the existing empirical literature and highlight new, testable implications, such as repercussions of the Dodd-Frank Act.

We propose a tractable general equilibrium framework to analyze the effectiveness of bank capital regulations when banks face competition from other investors, such as institutions in the shadow-banking system. Our analysis shows that increased competition can not only render previously optimal bank capital regulations ineffective but also imply that, over some ranges, increases in capital requirements cause more banks in the economy to engage in value-destroying risk-shifting. To avoid this perverse outcome, the regulator has to set capital requirements high enough, so that risk-shifting activities become less profitable from a banker's perspective than socially valuable banking activities. Our model generates a set of novel implications that highlight the intricate dependencies between optimal bank capital regulation and the comparative advantages of various institutions in the financial system.

There is wide agreement that before the recent financial crisis, financial institutions took excessive risk in their investment strategies. At the same time, regulators complained that banks did not reveal the extent of their difficulties in a timely fashion thus reducing the effectiveness of government intervention to prevent or mitigate the deleterious effects of the financial crisis. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how regulators can best use certain tools at their disposal to motivate banks to take less risk and to provide adverse information to regulators early. We argue that two tools, namely (i) allowing bank payouts to equity holders even when banks report they are in trouble and (ii) constraining banks’ future investment strategy when they are in trouble can achieve both goals. We show that, in some cases, it is optimal to use both of these tools in combination. That is, in such cases it is optimal to allow equity payouts when banks report they are in trouble, even though such payouts increase the incentive for banks to take excessive risk and even though these payments are financed by taxpayers. We also show that the more socially costly is constraining the bank’s portfolio selection or the more complex are the bank’s assets, the more likely it is that allowing larger payouts and fewer constraints is optimal. Finally we discuss how changes in bank capital requirements interact with inducing disclosure and preventing excessive risk taking.

Many Intellectual Property contracts are contingent on eventual production or success, in spite of the lack or moral hazard and in the possible presence of risk aversion on the part of the seller. This presents a puzzle. We propose a solution based on two key features of the market for IP, namely repeated interaction between buyers and sellers and uncertainty about the seller’s ability to produce valuable properties. Since information about the seller’s ability accrues over time, differences of opinion between buyer and seller about ability may persist and each sale contributes not only immediate income but affects the reputation of the seller. Using a model based on these features, we find that more reputable sellers should be offered a very different mix of cash and contingency payments than inexperienced sellers. We also relate the type of contract offered to the opportunity cost of the seller and discuss the probability of a sale taking place as a function of seller and product characteristics. The theoretical model is applied to a data base of screenplay sales, and we find that our theory can explain the diversity of contractual features observed in the data. We thank seminar participants at Rutgers University and at the UCLA economics of the motion pictures industry conference as well as Kose John for useful comment. Errors remain our own. * Chicago Board of Trade Professor of Finance and Economics, University of Chicago Booth School of Business, 5807 South Woodlawn Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637-1610, USA, milt@chicagobooth.edu, +1 (773) 7022549. † Professor of Finance and Economics, Rutgers Business School, 1 WP, Newark, NJ 07102, ravid@andromeda.rutgers.edu, (973) 353-5540. ‡ Ruby K. Powell Professor and Associate Professor, Division of Marketing and Supply Chain Management, Price College of Business, The University of Oklahoma, 307 West Brooks, Adams Hall 3, Norman, OK 73019-4001, (405) 325-4630, suman.basuroy-1@ou.edu.

The Journal of FinanceVolume 66, Issue 3 p. iv-v FELLOW OF THE AMERICAN FINANCE ASSOCIATION FOR 2011 Milton Harris, Milton HarrisSearch for more papers by this author Milton Harris, Milton HarrisSearch for more papers by this author First published: 23 May 2011 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6261.2011.01676.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume66, Issue3June 2011Pages iv-v RelatedInformation

Activist shareholders have lately been attempting to assert themselves in a struggle with management and regulators over control of corporate decisions. These efforts have met with mixed success. Meanwhile, shareholders have been pressing for changes in the rules governing access to the corporate proxy process, especially in regard to nominating directors. The key issue which these events have brought to light is whether, in fact, shareholders will be better off with enhanced control over corporate decisions. Proponents of increased shareholder participation argue that such participation is needed to counter the agency problems associated with management decisions. Opponents argue that shareholders lack the requisite knowledge and expertise to make effective decisions or that shareholders may have incentives to make value-reducing decisions. In this paper, we investigate what determines the optimality of shareholder control, taking account of some of the above arguments, both pro and con. Our main contribution is to use formal modeling to uncover some factors overlooked in these arguments. For example, we show that the claims that shareholders should not have control over important decisions because they lack sufficient information to make an informed decision or because they have a non-value-maximizing agenda are flawed. On the other hand, it has been argued that, since shareholders have the correct objective (value maximization) and can always delegate the decision to insiders when they believe insiders will make a better decision, shareholders should control all major decisions. We show that this argument is also flawed.

This article presents a model of optimal control of corporate boards of directors. We determine when one would expect inside versus outside directors to control the board, when the controlling party will delegate decision-making to the other party, the extent of communication between the parties, and the number of outside directors. We show that shareholders can sometimes be better off with an insider-controlled board. We derive endogenous relationships among profits, board control, and the number of outside directors that call into question the usual interpretation of some documented empirical regularities.

We present a simple model to analyze the allocation of decision-making authority and use the model to characterize the conditions under which a superior will delegate the decision to her subordinate. The model includes two managers, each of whom has private information regarding the outcome of a decision. Because the preferences of the two managers differ, neither can communicate her information fully to the other. We show that the probability of delegation increases with the importance of the subordinate's information and decreases with the importance of the superior's information. We also show that, even if the agent is biased toward larger investments, under certain conditions, the average investment will be smaller when the decision is delegated. These results help explain some findings in the empirical literature. Finally, we show the somewhat counterintuitive result that, in some circumstances, increases in agency problems result in increased willingness of the superior to delegate the decision. A number of empirical implications are developed.

As part of our ongoing research into capital budgeting processes as responses to decentralized information and incentive problems, we focus in this paper on when a level of a managerial hierarchy will delegate the allocation of capital across projects and time to the level below it. In our model, delegation is a way to save on costly investigation of proposed projects. Therefore, it is more extensive the larger are the costs of such investigations. This delegation takes advantage of the fact that the lower-level manager's preferences are assumed to be similar (though not identical) to those of the higher level.

We contend that security design should be approached as a problem of game design. That is, contracts should specify the procedures that govern the behavior of contract participants in determining outcomes as well as the allocations resulting from those outcomes. We characterize optimal contracts in two nested classes: all contracts (including those that depend on the state) and state-independent contracts. We demonstrate that in situations in which the dependence of contracts on the state is limited, contracts designed as games can improve the allocation of resources relative to nonstrategic allocation rules.

A model of trading in speculative markets is developed based on differences of opinion among traders. Our purpose is to explain some of the empirical regularities that have been documented concerning the relationship between volume and price and the time-series properties of price and volume. We assume that traders share common prior beliefs and receive common information but differ in the way in which they interpret this information. Some results are that absolute price changes and volume are positively correlated, consecutive-price changes exhibit negative serial correlation, and volume is positively autocorrelated.

ABSTRACTThis paper surveys capital structure theories based on agency costs, asymmetric information, product/input market interactions, and corporate control considerations (but excluding tax‐based theories). For each type of model, a brief overview of the papers surveyed and their relation to each other is provided. The central papers are described in some detail, and their results are summarized and followed by a discussion of related extensions. Each section concludes with a summary of the main implications of the models surveyed in the section. Finally, these results are collected and compared to the available evidence. Suggestions for future research are provided.

ABSTRACTThis paper provides a theory of capital structure based on the effect of debt on investors' information about the firm and on their ability to oversee management. We postulate that managers are reluctant to relinquish control and unwilling to provide information that could result in such an outcome. Debt is a disciplining device because default allows creditors the option to force the firm into liquidation and generates information useful to investors. We characterize the time path of the debt level and obtain comparative statics results on the debt level, bond yield, probability of default, probability of reorganization, etc.