Creditors of a distressed borrower face a coordination problem. Even if the fundamentals are sound, fear of premature foreclosure by others may lead to pre-emptive action, undermining the project. Recognition of this problem lies behind corporate bankruptcy provisions across the world, and it has been identified as a culprit in international financial crises, but has received scant attention from the literature on debt pricing. Without common knowledge of fundamentals, the incidence of failure is uniquely determined provided that private information is precise enough. This affords a way to price the coordination failure. Comparative statics on the unique equilibrium provides several insights on the role of information and the incidence of inefficient liquidation.
Creditors of a distressed borrower face a coordination problem. Even if the fundamentals are sound, fear of premature foreclosure by others may lead to pre-emptive action, undermining the project. Recognition of this problem lies behind corporate bankruptcy provisions across the world, and it has been identified as a culprit in international financial crises, but has received scant attention from the literature on debt pricing. The apparent multiplicity of equilibria is a barrier to development of this issue in asset pricing, but this multiplicity is only apparent. Without common knowledge of fundamentals, the incidence of failure is uniquely determined provided that private information is precise enough. This affords a way to price the coordination failure. There are two further conclusions. First, coordination is more difficult to sustain when fundamentals deteriorate. Thus, when fundamentals deteriorate,t he onset of crisis can be very swift. Second, “transparency” — in the sense of greater provision of information to the market — does not generally mitigate the coordination problem. Transparency is not a panacea.
An informed advisor wishes to convey her valuable information to an uninformed decision maker with identical preferences. Thus she has a current incentive to truthfully reveal her information. But if the decision maker thinks the advisor might be biased in favor of one decision, and the advisor does not wish to be thought to be biased, the advisor has a reputational incentive to lie. If the advisor is sufficiently concerned about her reputation, no information is conveyed in equilibrium. In a repeated version of this game, the advisor will care.
An informed advisor wishes to convey her valuable information to an uninformed decision maker with identical preferences. Thus she has a current incentive to truthfully reveal her information. But if the decision maker thinks the advisor might be biased in favor of one decision, and the advisor does not wish to be thought to be biased, the advisor has a reputational incentive to lie. If the advisor is sufficiently concerned about her reputation, no information is conveyed in equilibrium. In a repeated version of this game, the advisor will care.
Creditors of a distressed borrower face a coordination problem. Even if the fundamentals are sound, fear of premature foreclosure by others may lead to pre-emptive action, undermining the project. Recognition of this problem lies behind corporate bankruptcy provisions across the world, and it has been identified as a culprit in international financial crises, but has received scant attention from the literature on debt pricing. The apparent multiplicity of equilibria is a barrier to development of this issue in asset pricing, but this multiplicity is only apparent. Without common knowledge of fundamentals, the incidence of failure is uniquely determined provided that private information is precise enough. This affords a way to price the coordination failure. There are two further conclusions. First, coordination is more difficult to sustain when fundamentals deteriorate. Thus, when fundamentals deteriorate,t he onset of crisis can be very swift. Second, “transparency” — in the sense of greater provision of information to the market — does not generally mitigate the coordination problem. Transparency is not a panacea.
In repeated games with imperfect public monitoring, players can use public signals to coordinate their behavior perfectly, and thus support cooperative outcomes with the threat of punishments. But with even a small amount of private monitoring, players’ private histories may lead them to have sufficiently different views of the world that such coordination on punishments is no longer possible (we describe a simple strategy profile that is a perfect public equilibrium of a repeated prisoner’s dilemma with imperfect public monitoring, and yet is not an equilibrium for arbitrarily close games with private monitoring). If a perfect public equilibrium has players’ behavior conditioned only on finite histories, then it induces an equilibrium in all close-by games with private monitoring. This implies a folk theorem for repeated games with almost-public almost-perfect monitoring.
The swiftness and devastating impact of recent financial crises have taken many market participants by surprise, and pose challenges for economists seeking a theory of the onset of a crisis. We propose such a theory based on two features. The actions of diverse economic actors which undermine the currency are mutually reinforcing, while the fragmented nature of the media create small disparities in their information. In such circumstances, the beliefs of market participants can be tracked in the same way as the economic fundamentals, and an attack is triggered when the economic fundamentals deteriorate sufficiently to fall below the minimum level of market confidence necessary to support the currency. We give a characterization of such a minimum level of confidence.
Two players seek to co-ordinate their behavior in an incomplete information setting. We show that if each player’s preferences over his opponent’s action is independent of his own action or type, then cheap talk cannot expand the set of equilibrium outcomes.
The swiftness and devastating impact of recent financial crises have taken many market participants by surprise, and pose challenges for economists seeking a theory of the onset of a crisis. We propose such a theory based on two features. The actions of diverse economic actors which undermine the currency are mutually reinforcing, while the fragmented nature of the media create small disparities in their information. In such circumstances, the beliefs of market participants can be tracked in the same way as the economic fundamentals, and an attack is triggered when the economic fundamentals deteriorate sufficiently to fall below the minimum level of market confidence necessary to support the currency. We give a characterization of such a minimum level of confidence.