Vote-buying mechanisms allow agents to express any level of support for their preferred alternative at an increasing cost. Focusing on large societies with wealth inequality, we prove that the class of binary social choice rules implemented by well-behaved vote-buying mechanisms is indexed by a single parameter, which determines the importance assigned to the agents' willingness to pay to affect outcomes and to the number of supporters for each alternative. This parameter depends solely on the elasticity of the cost function near its origin: as this elasticity decreases, the intensities of support matter relatively more for outcomes than the supporters' count.

We investigate the effect of regulatory enforcement actions on banks' reputation by estimating the effect of non-compliance with laws and regulations among lead arrangers on the structure of syndicated loans. Consistent with a regulatory reputational stigma, a punished lead arranger increases her loan share to entice participants to continue to co-finance the loan. Consequently, when punished lead arranger initiates a new syndicated loan, then this loan tends to be more concentrated and co-funded by participants with previous collaboration with the lead arranger. However, the observed share increases by punished lead arrangers are seemingly mitigated by extending the loan guarantees, performance pricing provisions, and covenants.