This article develops a model that studies how the presence of a lender of last resort (LOLR) affects the ex ante investment incentives of banks. We show that a perfectly informed LOLR induces a first-best outcome for small and medium sized banks but causes moral hazard in larger banks given the high contagion cost of their failure. On the other hand, an imperfectly informed LOLR causes allocational inefficiencies in the investment decisions of smaller banks but mitigates the moral hazard problem in larger banks due to the constructive ambiguity nature of bail-outs when the LOLR’s information set is noisy. Policy implications include stricter supervision for smaller banks, and “buffer” requirements complemented with liquidity provision at penalty rates for larger banks.

We develop a model of financial intermediation wherein bank managers “reach for yield” – by overinvesting in risky assets and underinvesting in safer assets – provided they do not face much cost from liquidity shortfalls. The managers follow a pecking order in which their first preference is to invest in risky assets; their second preference is to hoard liquid assets; and their last preference is to invest in safer assets. This behavior is conducive to the formation of bubbles and “negative” bubbles in the market for risky and safer assets, respectively. Monetary loosening, by reducing the cost of liquidity shortfalls, induces further reach for yield and amplifies the bubbles.

This article develops a continuous-time asset pricing model for valuing corporate securities in the presence of both secured and unsecured debt. We consider a framework where creditors dominate the negotiation process. This is consistent with the increasing influence of creditors in bankruptcy. We show that the unsecured creditors are incentivized to liquidate the firm prematurely relative to the first-best threshold. However, if the firm’s liquidation value is very low, it should complement its secured debt with unsecured debt as a form of insurance to avoid early liquidations. Our results have important implications for the debt structure and the resolution of financial distress of modern firms with substantial intangible assets.

We examine how the banking sector could ignite the formation of asset price bubbles when there is access to abundant liquidity. Inside banks, to induce effort, loan officers are compensated based on the volume of loans. Volume-based compensation also induces greater risk taking; however, due to lack of commitment, loan officers are penalized ex post only if banks suffer a high enough liquidity shortfall. Outside banks, when there is heightened macroeconomic risk, investors reduce direct investment and hold more bank deposits. This ‘flight to quality’ leaves banks flush with liquidity, lowering the sensitivity of bankers’ payoffs to downside risks and inducing excessive credit volume and asset price bubbles. The seeds of a crisis are thus sown.

We model how monetary policy shocks affect the lending behavior of small and large banks. Other things being equal, small banks are riskier than large banks since the latter are more likely to be bailed out. Thus, small banks face a higher cost of non-deposit financing and are unable to finance liquidity shocks at a cost below a certain threshold. Consequently, we show that under a tight monetary regime small bank lending is more sensitive to monetary shocks. This relation reverses under loose monetary regimes where large bank lending is more responsive to monetary shocks. Our empirical results strongly support our analysis.