Prior research has shown that differential access to debt markets significantly affects capital structure. In this paper, we examine the effect of access to debt markets on investment decisions by using debt ratings to indicate bond market access. We find that rated firms are more likely to undertake acquisitions than nonrated firms. This finding remains even after accounting for firm character...

We present an empirical study of the pricing effect of liquidity in the credit default swaps (CDS) market. We construct liquidity proxies to capture various facets of CDS liquidity including adverse selection, search frictions, and inventory costs. We show that the liquidity effect on CDS spreads is significant with an estimated liquidity premium on par with those of Treasury bonds and corporat...

This paper investigates whether the efficiency effect of product market dispersion is a function of the infrastructural and policy environment. We hypothesize that more developed transportation and communication infrastructure and lower government regulation may reduce transaction costs, intensifying the competition associated with a given market structure, and we use data from the recently lib...

This paper studies the impact of vehicle quota system on the market structure of Singapore s car distributorship industry. Using recently available data, we analyzed the populations and new registrations of different brands of passenger car and motorcycle. We found an increase in market concentration in the car distributorship industry, as the market shares of the top distributors have increase...

Does encouraging trader participation enhance market competitiveness? This paper shows that, when trader preferences are interdependent, trader market power does not necessarily decrease with greater participation, and traders need not become price takers in large markets. Thus, larger markets can be less liquid and associated with lower ex ante welfare. In the linear-normal model, the necessar...

This paper explores the effect of banking market structure on the market structure of industrial sectors. It asks whether concentration in the banking market promotes the formation of industries constituted by a few, large firms, or rather, whether it facilitates the continuous entry of new firms, thus maintaining unconcentrated market structures across industries. Theoretical arguments could b...

Recent empirical studies point to the need for a model of bilateral market power between health plans and provider organizations. We develop such a model and use it to analyze the impact on cost and access of alternative contractual relationships between plans and providers. The plans differentiate themselves through distinct, albeit overlapping, provider networks of specialized, complementary ...

The aim of this paper is to examine what has been the role of information provision to the market throughout the crisis. We consider two main sources of information to the market, financial statements and information provided by credit rating agencies. We examine how these sources of information work and the effectiveness of their disclosure process during the crisis. Contrary to the commonly h...

This paper investigates analytically the welfare effects of black-market activities that firms undertake to evade taxes. The desirability of a black market is linked to the attributes of the goods supplied by blackmarket firms. The analysis identifies cases where a black market reduces (increases) the distortionary impact of taxation on the allocation of resources across the goods that the gove...

I study the joint determination of market structure and growth in an oligopolistic economy. Firms run in-house R&D programs to produce over time a continuous flow of cost-reducing innovations. In symmetric equilibrium, the relation between market structure and growth has two aspects. First, a larger number of firms induces fragmentation of the market and dispersion of R&D resources. This preven...