Conference Agenda

An asset owner designs an asset-backed security and a signal about its value. After experiencing a liquidity shock and privately observing the signal, he sells the security to a monopolistic buyer. Within double-monotone securites, asset sale is uniquely optimal, which corresponds to the most informationally sensitive security. Debt is a constrained optimum under external regulatory liquidity requirements on securities. Thus, the “folk intuition” behind optimality of debt due to its low informational sensitivity holds only under additional restrictions on security or information design. Within monotone securities, a live-or-die security is optimal, whereas additional-tier-1 debt is optimal under the regulatory liquidity requirements.