IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/restud/v87y2020i1p487-536..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Optimality of Debt under Flexible Information Acquisition

Author

Listed:
  • Ming Yang

Abstract

This article studies a security design problem featuring flexible information acquisition. To raise liquidity, a seller issues a security backed by her asset in place at the price she proposes to a buyer. Before deciding whether to accept the offer, the buyer can acquire costly information about the underlying asset. This case differs from the existing literature on security design, in that the buyer has the full flexibility of choosing not only the amount of resources to spend in information acquisition, but also how to allocate them, depending on the shape of the security. Debt is shown to be the unique optimal security for the seller, as its payoff is the least sensitive to the value of its underlying asset. This minimizes the buyer’s incentive to acquire information and mitigates the resulting adverse selection. I do not assume monotonicity of the feasible securities nor impose various distributional assumptions on information structures. Instead, I identify conditions for general information costs that support the results.

Suggested Citation

  • Ming Yang, 2020. "Optimality of Debt under Flexible Information Acquisition," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 87(1), pages 487-536.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:restud:v:87:y:2020:i:1:p:487-536.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/restud/rdz035
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Takalo, Tuomas & Tanayama, Tanja & Toivanen, Otto, 2022. "Welfare effects of R&D support policies," Research Discussion Papers 2/2022, Bank of Finland.
    2. Bartosz Maćkowiak & Filip Matějka & Mirko Wiederholt, 2023. "Rational Inattention: A Review," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 61(1), pages 226-273, March.
    3. Takalo, Tuomas & Tanayama, Tanja & Toivanen, Otto, 2017. "Welfare effects of R&D support policies," Bank of Finland Research Discussion Papers 30/2017, Bank of Finland.
    4. Doron Ravid, 2020. "Ultimatum Bargaining with Rational Inattention," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(9), pages 2948-2963, September.
    5. Jan Starmans, 2023. "Technological Determinants of Financial Constraints," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(5), pages 3003-3024, May.
    6. Babus, Ana & Hachem, Kinda, 2023. "Markets for financial innovation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 208(C).
    7. Benjamin Hébert & Michael Woodford, 2021. "Neighborhood-Based Information Costs," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 111(10), pages 3225-3255, October.
    8. Glode, Vincent & Opp, Christian C. & Sverchkov, Ruslan, 2022. "To pool or not to pool? Security design in OTC markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(2), pages 508-526.
    9. Asano, Koji, 2024. "Managing financial expertise," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 89(PA), pages 351-365.
    10. Cai, Zhifeng & Dong, Feng, 2023. "Public disclosure and private information acquisition: A global game approach," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 210(C).
    11. Chaigneau, Pierre, 2023. "Capital Structure with Information about the Upside and the Downside," MPRA Paper 121397, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Kim, Kyungmin & Koh, Youngwoo, 2022. "Auctions with flexible information acquisition," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 256-281.
    13. Dunhong Jin & Thomas Noe, 2022. "The Golden Mean: The Risk‐Mitigating Effect of Combining Tournament Rewards with High‐Powered Incentives," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 77(5), pages 2907-2947, October.
    14. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2022_002 is not listed on IDEAS

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:restud:v:87:y:2020:i:1:p:487-536.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/restud .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.