Adverse Selection and Risk Aversion in Capital Markets

Luis Braido (), Carlos Eugênio da Costa () and Bev Dahlby ()

FinanzArchiv: Public Finance Analysis, 2011, vol. 67, issue 4, 303-326

Abstract: We generalize Boadway and Keen's model of adverse selection in capital markets to allow for risk aversion on the part of entrepreneurs. We use the new model to analyze two types of policies. We first consider policies that would allow entrepreneurs to use a greater fraction of their total wealth in financing their projects, thus allowing them to reduce reliance on debt or equity finance by outside investors. We show that such policies may not be welfare-improving, because they expose entrepreneurs to more downside risk. This result highlights the importance of allowing for risk aversion, since policies that aim at alleviating inefficiencies associated with adverse selection may increase risk exposure and ultimately reduce welfare. We then consider how the tax treatment of losses affects social welfare. We show that if a society places a high value on distributional equity or if entrepreneurs are sufficiently risk-averse, a full-loss-offset system may be desirable even when there is excessive investment.

Keywords: adverse selection; debt; equity; tax policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G14 H20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mohrsiebeck.com/en/article/adverse-sel ... 1628001522111x614141 (text/html)
Fulltext access is included for subscribers to the printed version.

Related works:
Working Paper: Adverse Selection and Risk Aversion in Capital Markets (2010)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mhr:finarc:urn:sici:0015-2218(291112)67:4_303:asarai_2.0.tx_2-h

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
Mohr Siebeck GmbH & Co. KG, P.O.Box 2040, 72010 Tübingen, Germany

DOI: 10.1628/001522108X614141

Access Statistics for this article

FinanzArchiv: Public Finance Analysis is currently edited by Alfons Weichenrieder, Ronnie Schöb and Jean-François Tremblay

More articles in FinanzArchiv: Public Finance Analysis from Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Thomas Wolpert ().