We show how to measure the welfare effects arising from increased data availability. When lenders have more data on prospective borrower costs, they can charge prices that are more aligned with these costs. This increases total social welfare, and transfers...

The modern financial system features complicated financial intermediation chains, with each layer performing a certain degree of credit/maturity transformation. We develop a dynamic model in which an entrepreneur borrows from overlapping-generation households via layers of funds, forming a credit chain....

Should regulators reveal the models they use to stress test banks? In our setting, revealing leads to gaming, but secrecy can induce banks to underinvest in socially desirable assets for fear of failing the test. We show that although the...

We propose a model of strategic debt renegotiation in which businesses are sequentially interconnected through their liabilities. This financing structure, which we refer to as a debt chain, gives rise to externalities, as a lender's willingness to provide concessions to...

Should regulators encourage the migration of trade from over-the-counter (OTC) to centralized markets? To address this question, we study a model in which banks make costly decisions to participate in an OTC market, a centralized market, or both markets at...

I build a search model of bond and credit default swap (CDS) markets with endogenous investor participation and show that shorting bonds through CDS increases the liquidity and price of bonds. By allowing investors to trade the credit risk of...