We develop a new theory of information production during credit booms. Entrepreneurs need credit to undertake investment projects, some of which enable them to divert resources. Lenders can protect themselves from such diversion in two ways: collateralization and costly screening,...

How effectively does a decentralized marketplace aggregate information that is dispersed throughout the economy? We study this question in a dynamic setting where sellers have private information that is correlated with an unobservable aggregate state. In any equilibrium, each seller's...

We study the joint determination of product quality and complexity in a rational setting. We introduce a novel notion of complexity, which affects how difficult it is for an agent to acquire information about product quality. In our model, an...

I develop a search-and-bargaining model of endogenous intermediation in over-the-counter markets. Unlike the existing work, my model allows for rich investor heterogeneity in three simultaneous dimensions: preferences, inventories, and meeting rates. By comparing trading-volume patterns that arise in my model...

We present a model of liquidity management and financing decisions under moral hazard in which a firm accumulates cash to forestall liquidity default. When the cash balance is high, a tension arises between accumulating more cash to reduce the probability...

This paper explores the incentives of product designers to complexify products, and the resulting implications for overall product quality. In our model, a consumer can accept or reject a product proposed by a designer, who can affect the quality and...