Papers
Dilutive Financing
Uploaded: May 11, 2026
This paper presents a dynamic model of firm financing where firms use financial slack to reduce rent extraction by financiers with bargaining power. Financing is lumpy because it is optimal to bargain infrequently. Moreover, firms may finance ‘early’ before exhausting...
Government Guarantees, Credit Multiplier, and Financial Fragility
Uploaded: May 10, 2026
Government guarantees generate a multiplier effect: one dollar of tax-funded guarantees expands lending by more than one dollar. This multiplier is stronger under information-insensitive debt, as guarantees suppress costly private information production, relaxing borrowing constraints for all firms rather than...
Automated Market Making and Loss-Versus-Rebalancing
Uploaded: May 6, 2026
Automated Market Makers (AMMs) are both liquidity sources and investment vehicles for market participants. This paper analyzes the risks and returns of liquidity provision (LP) investments in AMMs. In a continuous-time model, we show that LP returns decompose into a...
Simplicity and Risk
Published: Journal of Finance, 2025
I introduce and test for preference for simplicity in choice under risk. I characterize the theory axiomatically, and derive its properties and unique predictions relative to canonical models. By designing and running theoretically-motivated experiments, I document that people value simplicity...
Risk Aversion with Nothing to Lose
Published: Journal of Economic Theory, 2024
In a continuous-time model, a risk-neutral decision-maker chooses the volatility of a state variable and is terminated when the variable falls below a threshold. I provide economically interpretable conditions under which the decision-maker becomes risk averse endogenously and minimizes volatility...
Incentives and Performance with Optimal Money Management Contracts
Published: Journal of Political Economy, 2023
I characterize the dynamics of incentives in an optimal contract with investment delegation, moral hazard, and uncertainty about the agent’s productivity. The principal increases the agent’s incentives after good performance in order to delegate more capital to an agent with...