[The empty creditor problem arises when a debtholder has obtained insurance against default but otherwise retains control rights in and outside bankruptcy. We analyze this problem from an ex ante and ex post perspective in a formal model of debt with limited commitment, by comparing contracting outcomes with and without insurance through credit default swaps (CDS). We show that CDS, and the empty creditors they give rise to, have important ex ante commitment benefits: By strengthening creditors' bargaining power, they raise the debtor's pledgeable income and help reduce the incidence of strategic default. However, we also show that lenders will over-insure in equilibrium, giving rise to an inefficiently high incidence of costly bankruptcy. We discuss a number of remedies that have been proposed to overcome the inefficiency resulting from excess insurance.]

[This article adopts a definition of property rights from legal scholarship: A property right (in contrast to a contractual right) is enforceable, not only against the parties to a contract, but also against third parties outside the contract. In a financial contracting setting, we ask: When should the law enforce a lender's contractual protections as property rights, given that these rights may be hidden and costly for other lenders to discover? Our model explains why the law limits the creation and enforceability of property rights, and develops principles of optimal enforceability. These principles are often reflected in the law.]

We analyze the transmission effects of monetary policy in a general equilibrium model of the financial sector, with bank lending and securities markets. Bank lending is constrained by capital adequacy requirements, and asymmetric information adds a cost to outside bank equity capital. In our model, monetary policy does not affect bank lending through changes in bank liquidity; rather, it operates through changes in the spread of bank loans over corporate bonds, which induce changes in the aggregate composition of financing by firms, and in banks' equity-capital base. The model produces multiple equilibria, one of which displays all the features of a "credit crunch."

It is shown that an incumbent seller who faces a threat of entry into his or her market will sign long-term contracts that prevent the entry of some lower-cost producers even though they do not preclude entry completely. Moreover, when a seller possesses superior information about the likelihood of entry, it is shown that the length of the contract may act as a signal of the true probability of entry.

We argue that although decentralization has advantages in finding low-cost solutions, these advantages are accompanied by coordination problems, which lead to delay or duplication of effort or both. Consequently, decentralization is desirable when there is little urgency or a great deal of private information, but it is strictly undesirable in urgent problems when private information is less important. We also examine the effect of large numbers and find that coordination problems disappear in the limit if distributions are common knowledge.

This article does three things: (1) it offers a slightly modernized treatment of the two well-known agency costs of external financing of Jensen and Meckling; (2) it provides a deeper exploration than they offer of the limited liability corporation, and of optimal control allocations when financial contracts are incomplete; and, (3) it assesses the lasting influence or their ideas, their multiple interpretations, as well as misinterpretations.

By committing to terminate funding if a firm's performance is poor, investors can mitigate managerial incentive problems. These optimal financial constraints, however, encourage rivals to ensure that a firm's performance is poor; this raises the chance that the financial constraints become binding and induce exit. We analyze the optimal financial contract in light of this predatory threat. The optimal contract balances the benefits of deterring predation by relaxing financial constraints against the cost of exacerbating incentive problems.

This paper provides a brief overview of the current state of the not-for-profit sector and discusses specific governance issues in not-for-profit organizations. We offer an in-depth analysis of the issues that arise when not-for-profit organizations compete against for-profit firms in the same markets. We argue that while competition by for-profit firms can discipline not-for-profit firms and mitigate their governance problems, the effects of this competition are distorted by the not-for-profits’ corporate income tax exemptions. Based on a simple general equilibrium analysis, we argue that there is little justification for such exemptions.

Within an optimal contracting framework, we analyze the optimal number of creditors a company borrows from. We also analyze the optimal allocation of security interests among creditors and intercreditor voting rules that govern renegotiation of debt contracts. The key to our analysis is the idea that these aspects of the debt structure affect the outcome of debt renegotiation following a default. Debt structures that lead to inefficient renegotiation are beneficial in that they deter default, but they are also costly if default is beyond a manager's control. The optimal debt structure balances these effects. We characterize how the optimal debt structure depends on firm characteristics such as its technology, its credit rating, and the market for its assets.