Essays on Financial Crisis and Bailout

TL;DRAbstract

This dissertation consists of three essays on financial economics. In the first chapter, jointly written with Yeon-Koo Che and Chongwoo Choe, we focus on observations during the recent financial crisis that financially distressed firms may be reluctant to accept government bailouts for fear that it may signal the weakness of their balance sheets and inhibit future financing. To capture such bailout stigma, we develop a dynamic model in which a firm must finance projects by selling legacy assets. The value of the asset is the firm's private information, which results in inefficient trading of the asset due to standard adverse selection. Although the adverse selection problem creates a scope for government intervention, accepting a bailout can signal the toxicity of the asset, which worsens the adverse selection for the firm in the subsequent trading of its asset. We find multiple equilibrium responses to a government bailout. Bailout terms that would otherwise be acceptable may be refus

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