Over the past decade several countries, including the US, have introduced or redesigned legislation that confers priority in bankruptcy upon all or some bank deposits. We argue that in the presence of contracting costs such rules can increase efficiency. We first show in a private information model that a borrower can reduce overall costs of finance by letting informationally heterogeneous lenders choose between junior and senior debt. In particular, we find that debt priorities reduce socially wasteful information gathering by investors. We then argue why, particularly in banking, legal standardization of debt priorities may be superior to bilateral private arrangements.

Over the past decade several countries, including the US, have introduced or redesigned legislation that confers priority in bankruptcy upon all or some bank deposits. We argue that in the presence of contracting costs such rules can increase efficiency. We first show in a private information model that a borrower can reduce overall costs of finance by letting informationally heterogeneous lenders choose between junior and senior debt. In particular, we find that debt priorities reduce socially wasteful information gathering by investors. We then argue why, particularly in banking, legal standardization of debt priorities may be superior to bilateral private arrangements.

We examine the implications of portfolio theory for the cross-sectional behavior of equity trading volume. Two-fund separation theorems suggest a natural definition for trading activity: share turnover. If two-fund separation holds, share turnover must be identical for all securities. If (K + 1)-fund separation holds, we show that turnover satisfies an approximately linear K-factor structure. These implications are examined empirically using individual weekly turnover data for NYSE and AMEX securities from 1962 to 1996. We find strong evidence against two-fund separation, and a principal-components decomposition suggests that turnover is well approximated by a two-factor linear model.

We show that concentrating bank regulation on bank capital ratios may be ineffective in controlling risk taking. We propose, instead, a more direct mechanism of influencing bank risk-taking incentives, in which the FDIC insurance premium scheme incorporates incentive features of top-management compensation. With this scheme, we show that bank owners choose an optimal management compensation structure that induces first-best value-maximizing investment choices by a bank's management. We explicitly characterize the parameters of the optimal management compensation structure and the fairly priced FDIC insurance premium in the presence of a single or multiple sources of agency problems.

We show that concentrating bank regulation on bank capital ratios may be ineffective in controlling risk taking. We propose, instead, a more direct mechanism of influencing bank risk-taking incentives, in which the FDIC insurance premium scheme incorporates incentive features of top-management compensation. With this scheme, we show that bank owners choose an optimal management compensation structure that induces first-best value-maximizing investment choices by a bank's management. We explicitly characterize the parameters of the optimal management compensation structure and the fairly priced FDIC insurance premium in the presence of a single or multiple sources of agency problems.

"We examine the implications of portfolio theory for the cross-sectional behavior of equity trading volume. Two-fund separation theorems suggest a natural definition for trading activity: share turnover...We find strong evidence against two-fund separation, and a principal-components decomposition suggests that turnover is well approximated by a two-factor linear model" -- Abstract.