This thesis consists of three chapters on informational frictions in financial markets. The chapters analyze problems related to markets' ability to guide real investment, and what drives liquidity. Both problems are important to ensure efficient resource ...
We solve a portfolio choice problem when expected returns, covariances, and trading costs follow a regime-switching model. The optimal policy trades towards an aim portfolio given by a weighted-average of the conditional mean-variance-efficient portfolios ...
This thesis consists of three parts that study separate subjects in corporate finance and corporate governance. The overarching theme is ownership by CEOs and other insiders.In the first part, which is co-authored work with Rüdiger Fahlenbrach, René M. ...
This thesis develops three models that study the motivation of various agents to take on debt,
and the impact that excessive financial leverage can have on social welfare.
In the chapter "Short-term Bank Leverage and the Value of Liquid Reserves", the ince ...
This thesis develops models for three problems of liquidity under asymmetric information.
In the chapter "Disclosures, Rollover Risk, and Debt Runs" I build a model of dynamic debt
runs without perfect information in order to understand the impact of asset ...
We analyze dynamic trading by an activist investor who can expend costly effort to affect firm value. We obtain the equilibrium in closed form for a general activism technology, including both binary and continuous outcomes. Variation in parameters can pro ...
This thesis examines the effects of financing frictions on corporate decisions using dynamic models. Accounting for financing frictions helps reconcile a number of regularities that are hard to explain within the Modigliani-Miller framework. For instance, ...
Using a comprehensive sample of trades from Schedule 13D filings by activist investors, we study how measures of adverse selection respond to informed trading. We find that on days when activists accumulate shares, measures of adverse selection and of stoc ...
We infer a term structure of interbank risk from spreads between rates on interest rate swaps indexed to the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) and overnight indexed swaps. We develop a tractable model of interbank risk to decompose the term structure i ...
We provide the first systematic study of liquidity in the foreign exchange market. We find significant variation in liquidity across exchange rates, substantial illiquidity costs, and strong commonality in liquidity across currencies and with equity and bo ...
This paper presents an equilibrium model in a pure exchange economy when investors have three possible sources of heterogeneity. Investors may differ in their beliefs, in their level of risk aversion, and in their time preference rate. The authors study th ...