IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/119082.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Innovations, rents and risk

Author

Listed:
  • Biais, Bruno
  • Rochet, Jean-Charles
  • Woolley, Paul

Abstract

We offer a rational expectations model of the dynamics of innovative industries. The fundamental value of innovations is uncertain and one must learn whether they are solid or fragile. Also, when the industry is new, it is difficult to monitor managers and make sure they exert the effort necessary to reduce default risk. This gives rise to moral hazard. In this context, initial successes spur optimism and growth. But increasingly confident managers end up requesting large rents. If these become too high, investors give up on incentives, and default risk rises. Thus, moral hazard gives rise to endogenous crises and fat tails in the distribution of aggregate default risk. We calibrate our model to fit the stylized facts of the MBS industry's boom and bust cycle.

Suggested Citation

  • Biais, Bruno & Rochet, Jean-Charles & Woolley, Paul, 2010. "Innovations, rents and risk," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 119082, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
  • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:119082
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/119082/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alessandro Barbarino & Boyan Jovanovic, 2007. "Shakeouts And Market Crashes," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 48(2), pages 385-420, May.
    2. Bengt Holmstrom & Jean Tirole, 1997. "Financial Intermediation, Loanable Funds, and The Real Sector," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(3), pages 663-691.
    3. Dirk Bergemann & Ulrigh Hege, 2005. "The Financing of Innovation: Learning and Stopping," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 36(4), pages 719-752, Winter.
    4. Zeira, Joseph, 1987. "Investment as a Process of Search," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 95(1), pages 204-210, February.
    5. Markus K. Brunnermeier, 2009. "Deciphering the Liquidity and Credit Crunch 2007-2008," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 23(1), pages 77-100, Winter.
    6. Pastor, Lubos & Veronesi, Pietro, 2006. "Was there a Nasdaq bubble in the late 1990s?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(1), pages 61-100, July.
    7. Alex Edmans & Xavier Gabaix, 2009. "Is CEO Pay Really Inefficient? A Survey of New Optimal Contracting Theories," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 15(3), pages 486-496, June.
    8. Joseph Zeira, 2000. "Informational overshooting, booms and crashes," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue Apr.
    9. Shapiro, Carl & Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1984. "Equilibrium Unemployment as a Worker Discipline Device," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(3), pages 433-444, June.
    10. Tarun Ramadorai, 2012. "The Secondary Market for Hedge Funds and the Closed Hedge Fund Premium," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 67(2), pages 479-512, April.
    11. Thomas Philippon & Ariell Reshef, 2007. "Skill Biased Financial Development: Education, Wages and Occupations in the U.S. Financial Sector," NBER Working Papers 13437, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. DeMarzo, Peter & Kaniel, Ron & Kremer, Ilan, 2007. "Technological innovation and real investment booms and busts," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(3), pages 735-754, September.
    13. Bergemann, Dirk & Hege, Ulrich, 1998. "Venture capital financing, moral hazard, and learning," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 22(6-8), pages 703-735, August.
    14. Bergemann, Dirk & Hege, Ulrich, 1998. "Venture capital financing, moral hazard, and learning," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 22(6-8), pages 703-735, August.
    15. Dirk Bergemann & Ulrigh Hege, 2005. "The Financing of Innovation: Learning and Stopping," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 36(4), pages 719-752, Winter.
    16. Rafael Rob, 1991. "Learning and Capacity Expansion under Demand Uncertainty," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 58(4), pages 655-675.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Challe, Edouard & Mojon, Benoit & Ragot, Xavier, 2013. "Equilibrium risk shifting and interest rate in an opaque financial system," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 117-133.
    2. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/2ld6ogm9lq9b4b37ft2unhirm4 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Landier, Augustin & Sraer, David & Thesmar, David, 2011. "The risk-Shifting Hypothesis," IDEI Working Papers 699, Institut d'Économie Industrielle (IDEI), Toulouse.
    4. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/2ld6ogm9lq9b4b37ft2unhirm4 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. repec:hal:pseose:halshs-00944916 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Monnet, Cyril & Quintin, Erwan, 2017. "Limited disclosure and hidden orders in asset markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 123(3), pages 602-616.
    7. Landier, Augustin & Sraer, David & Thesmar, David, 2011. "The risk-Shifting Hypothesis : Evidence from Subprime Originations," TSE Working Papers 11-279, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Biais, Bruno & Rochet, Jean-Charles & Woolley, Paul, 2009. "The Lifecycle of the Financial Sector and Other Speculative Industries," TSE Working Papers 09-031, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    2. Biais, Bruno & Rochet, Jean-Charles & Woolley, Paul, 2010. "Innovations, Rents and Risk," TSE Working Papers 10-200, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    3. Biais, Bruno & Rochet, Jean-Charles & Woolley, Paul, 2009. "Rents, learning and risk in the financial sector and other innovative industries," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 24417, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    4. Bruno Biais & Jean-Charles Rochet & Paul Woolley, 2015. "Dynamics of Innovation and Risk," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 28(5), pages 1353-1380.
    5. Alessandro Spiganti, 2022. "Wealth Inequality and the Exploration of Novel Alternatives," Working Papers 2022:02, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".
    6. Johannes Hörner & Larry Samuelson, 2013. "Incentives for experimenting agents," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 44(4), pages 632-663, December.
    7. Dirk Bergemann & Ulrich Hege & Liang Peng, 2008. "Venture Capital and Sequential Investments," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1682R2, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University, revised Oct 2009.
    8. Besanko, David & Tong, Jian & Wu, Jianjun, 2016. "Subsidizing research programs with "if" and "when" uncertainty in the face of severe informational constraints," Discussion Paper Series In Economics And Econometrics 1605, Economics Division, School of Social Sciences, University of Southampton.
    9. Khalil, Fahad & Lawarree, Jacques & Rodivilov, Alexander, 2020. "Learning from failures: Optimal contracts for experimentation and production," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 190(C).
    10. Arthur Charpentier & Romuald Élie & Carl Remlinger, 2023. "Reinforcement Learning in Economics and Finance," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 62(1), pages 425-462, June.
    11. , & ,, 2012. "A principal-agent model of sequential testing," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 7(3), September.
    12. Ramana Nanda & William R. Kerr, 2015. "Financing Innovation," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 7(1), pages 445-462, December.
    13. Mikhail Drugov & Rocco Macchiavello, 2014. "Financing Experimentation," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 6(1), pages 315-349, February.
    14. Rodivilov, Alexander, 2022. "Monitoring innovation," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 297-326.
    15. Mayer, Simon, 2022. "Financing breakthroughs under failure risk," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(3), pages 807-848.
    16. Xu Tan & Quan Wen, 2020. "Information acquisition and voting with heterogeneous experts," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 51(4), pages 1063-1092, December.
    17. Martin Cripps & Godfrey Keller & Sven Rady, 2000. "Strategic Experimentation: The Case of the Poisson Bandits," Econometric Society World Congress 2000 Contributed Papers 0878, Econometric Society.
    18. Bruno Strulovici, 2010. "Learning While Voting: Determinants of Collective Experimentation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 78(3), pages 933-971, May.
    19. Dirk Bergemann & Ulrich Hege, 2002. "The Value of Benchmarking," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1379, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University, revised Oct 2002.
    20. Chia-Hui Chen & Junichiro Ishida, 2015. "A Tenure-Clock Problem," ISER Discussion Paper 0919, Institute of Social and Economic Research, The University of Osaka.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • O30 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:ehl:lserod:119082. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    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.