We study the equilibrium effects of the “S” dimension of ESG under imperfect competition. ESG policies are pledges made by firms that constrain managers to treat their stakeholders better than market conditions alone dictate. Moderate policies limit market power and prompt managers to be more competitive; aggressive polices backfire, both for adopting firms and intended beneficiaries. In contrast to the “shareholder primacy” paradigm, competition in ESG policies under the “stakeholder capitalism” paradigm is a panacea for market power, delivering the first-best outcome in equilibrium. We discuss drivers behind the recent rise in ESG, ESG-linked compensation, and disclosure practices.

Share prices generally fall when a firm announces a seasoned equity offering (SEO). A standard explanation is that an SEO communicates negative information to investors. We show that if repeated capital market transactions are possible, this same asymmetry of information between firms and investors implies that some firms also repurchase shares in equilibrium. A subset of these firms directly profit from repurchases, while other firms repurchase in order to improve the terms of a subsequent SEO. The possibility of repurchases reduces both SEOs and investment. Overall, our analysis highlights the importance of analyzing SEOs and repurchases in a unified framework.

In most contemporary economies loan contracts that mandate exclusionary penalties such as imprisonment or other non-pecuniary punishments for defaulting debtors are illegal, despite the fact that in some cases contracting parties might gain by being able to use them. A possible rationale for contracting restrictions of this type is that exclusion imposes negative externalities on individuals not party to the original loan contract. We explore the ability of such externalities to account for these restrictions. We contrast exclusion with enforceable collateral seizure, a widespread feature of developed financial systems. We also consider “behavioral” agents who underestimate their chances of being punished, and show that overconfidence of this type is a less compelling justification for restrictions on exclusionary punishments than is often argued.

[Many economic agents take corrective actions based on information inferred from market prices of firms' securities. Examples include directors and activists intervening in the management of firms and bank supervisors taking actions to improve the health of financial institutions. We provide an equilibrium analysis of such situations in light of a key problem: if agents use market prices when deciding on corrective actions, prices adjust to reflect this use and potentially become less revealing. We show that market information and agents' information are complementary, and discuss measures that can increase agents' ability to learn from market prices.]

Conglomerates, trade credit arrangements, and banks are all instances of financial intermediation. However, these institutions differ significantly in the extent to which the projects financed absorb aggregate intermediary risk, in whether or not intermediation is carried out by a financial specialist, in the type of projects they fund and in the type of claims they issue to investors. The paper develops a simple unified model that both accounts for the continued coexistence of these different forms of intermediation, and explains why they differ. Specific applications to conglomerate firms, trade credit, and banking are discussed.

We analyse a consumption-saving problem in which time-inconsistent preferences generate demand for commitment, but uncertainty about future consumption needs generates demand for flexibility. We characterize in a standard contracting framework the circumstances under which this combination is possible, in the sense that a commitment contract exists that implements the desired state-contingent consumption plan, thus offering both commitment and flexibility. The key condition that we identify is a preference reversal condition: high desired consumption today should be associated with low marginal utility at future dates. Moreover, there are conditions under which preference reversal naturally arises. The key insight of our article is that time-inconsistent preferences not only generate commitment problems, but also allow their possible solution, since the preferences of later selves can be exploited to punish overconsumption by earlier selves.

We develop a benchmark model to study the equilibrium consequences of indexing in a standard rational expectations setting. Individuals incur costs to participate in financial markets, and these costs are lower for individuals who restrict themselves to indexing. A decline in indexing costs directly increases the prevalence of indexing, thereby reducing the price efficiency of the index and augmenting relative price efficiency. In equilibrium, these changes in price efficiency in turn further increase indexing, and raise the welfare of uninformed traders. For well-informed traders, the share of trading gains stemming from market timing increases relative to stock selection trades.

We develop a benchmark model to study the equilibrium consequences of indexing in a standard rational expectations setting. Individuals incur costs to participate in financial markets, and these costs are lower for individuals who restrict themselves to indexing. A decline in indexing costs directly increases the prevalence of indexing, thereby reducing the price efficiency of the index and augmenting relative price efficiency. In equilibrium, these changes in price efficiency in turn further increase indexing, and raise the welfare of uninformed traders. For well-informed traders, the share of trading gains stemming from market timing increases relative to stock selection trades.

Many finance jobs entail the risk of large losses, and hard‐to‐monitor effort. We analyze the equilibrium consequences of these features in a model with optimal dynamic contracting. We show that finance jobs feature high compensation, up‐or‐out promotion, and long work hours, and are more attractive than other jobs. Moral hazard problems are exacerbated in booms, even though pay increases. Employees whose talent would be more valuable elsewhere can be lured into finance jobs, while the most talented employees might be unable to land these jobs because they are “too hard to manage.”

Prior research on “strategic voting” has reached the conclusion that unanimity rule is uniquely bad: it results in destruction of information, and hence makes voters worse off. We show that this conclusion depends critically on the assumption that the issue being voted on is exogenous, that is, independent of the voting rule used. We depart from the existing literature by endogenizing the proposal that is put to a vote, and establish that under many circumstances unanimity rule makes voters better off. Moreover, in some cases unanimity rule also makes the proposer better off, even when he has diametrically opposing preferences. In this case, unanimity is the Pareto dominant voting rule. Voters prefer unanimity rule because it induces the proposing individual to make a more attractive proposal. The proposing individual prefers unanimity rule because the acceptance probabilities for moderate proposals are higher. We apply our results to jury trials and debt restructuring.