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The common justification, in financial theory, for the existence of debt covenants is their use as contractual devices that reduce agency problems between borrowers and lenders. The thesis first examines the extent to which debt covenants alleviate these agency problems, and how they affect a borrower's debt financing decisions. Then, building on recent theories on the costs of bank financing, the dissertation suggests a new economic rationale for debt covenants as instruments that can reduce these costs. The thesis consists of three essays: / The first essay shows that, debt covenants create underinvestment incentives while reducing the overinvestment cost of debt It also finds that the borrower's choice between different contracts with, and without covenants, depends on the magnitude of the agency problems, and the quality of the lender's monitoring technology. / The second essay shows how debt covenants reduce the costs of banks information monopoly. In fact, contingent contracting with debt covenants can be used by banks to precommit against using their informational advantage to hold up borrowers and extract rents, thus giving borrowers incentives to exert greater effort. / The third essay shows that the renegotiation that debt covenants permit, can reduce liquidity risk defined as the risk that a solvent but illiquid borrower is unable to obtain refinancing. It also shows that a debt contract with covenants is similar to a mix of debt contracts with different maturities. / The thesis concludes with a review of the determinants of corporate debt maturity structure, and the literature on corporate reliance on bank financing and suggests future research in this area.

This dissertation consists of three essays: (I) Double Liability, Moral Hazard and Deposit Insurance Schemes, (II) Contract Costs, Lender Identity and Bank Loan Pricing, and (III) Bank Capital Structure and Differential Lending Behaviour. The first essay proposes to add double liability to a deposit insurance scheme to induce insurees (depository financial institutions) to reveal their true risk types. The second essay looks at the differential lending patterns of American banks versus Japanese banks. The third essay discusses the relationship between the characteristics of a lender and those of the borrower.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Economics, June 2000. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Licenciado en Contaduría)--Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1983. / At head of title: Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. Facultad de Contaduria y Administracion. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [235]-238).

This study examined whether or not financial intermediation can explain the variations in the savings-investment ratio in South Africa during the period 1990 to 2012. The study specifically tests the McKinnon Conduit Effect hypothesis which states that increasing interest rate raises the capacity of financial savings via financial intermediaries based on data from South Africa. Apart from informal graphical test, this study employed formal tests such as the Augmented Dickey-Fuller and Phillips Perron stationarity tests to test the properties of the variables considered, including interest rates, for stationarity. In order to ascertain the long-run and short-run dynamics between its variables, the Johansen co-integration test is utilized, while the Error Correction Mechanism is also employed. Results from the study state that financial assets (a proxy for financial intermediation), income and real interest rate all positively impact the savings-investment ratio. Additionally, short-run analysis results showed that income, financial assets and real interest rates positively influence the savings-investment ratio. Real interest rates were seen as being both positive and statistically significant. Therefore the study recommended that the financial services sector and the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) should work together as this will result in the improvement of efficiencies in price discovery with regards to bank charges, access to banking facilities and the timely provision of services in order to encourage savings (for investment purposes) in the South African economy.

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Modern banking theories provide a host of explanations for the existence of intermediaries, highlight their important influence on economic growth, delineate the risks inherent in the services they provide, and illustrate the market failures and real costs of bank failures that precipitate the need for regulation and oversight of the sector. This thesis is a collection of three essays that looks at three of these key aspects of financial intermediaries - the development of financial intermediaries, the function of the lender of last resort that has emerged as an important part of the safety net afforded to financial intermediaries, and the occurrence of financial crises. The first chapter of this thesis provides an introduction to the academic literature on financial intermediation covering different theories put forward to explain their emergence, and highlighting the risks inherent in their operation. It emphasizes the crucial functions they perform in the economy and makes a case for regulation and oversight of the sector to reduce the incidence and alleviate the effects of financial crises. The second chapter seeks to determine the policy and institutional factors that influence the development of financial institutions as measured across three dimensions - depth, efficiency, and stability. Applying the concept of the financial possibility frontier, developed by Beck and Feyen (2013) and formalized by Barajas et al. (2013b), we determine key policy variables affecting the gap between actual levels of development and benchmarks predicted by structural variables. Our dynamic panel estimation shows that inflation, trade openness, institutional quality, and banking crises significantly affect financial development. We also assess the impact of the policy variables across the different dimensions of development thereby identifying complementarities and potential trade-offs for policy makers. The third chapter models the role of the lender of last resort (LoLR) in a general equilibrium framework. We allow for heterogeneous agents and a risk-averse banking sector, and incorporate the frictions of endogenous default, liquidity, and money. Adverse supply shocks in monetary endowments trigger default, leading to deterioration in the value of bank assets, and subsequent bank illiquidity in some states of the world. LoLR intervention is then assessed with regards to its economy-wide effect on welfare, bank profitability, and the level of default. The results provide a justification for constructive ambiguity. The fourth chapter aims to provide an explanation for the incidence of financial crises by combining insights from agency theory and Minsky's financial instability hypothesis (Minsky, 1992) in a model with endogenous default. Our theoretical model shows that the probability of a financial crisis increases as the quality of shareholder information decreases. We then develop a measure for the quality of shareholder information following Simon (1989) and show that the market-wide quality of shareholder information: i) is poor (with no trend) in the Pre-SEC period (1840 to 1934); ii) improves substantially following the SEC reforms; and iii) gradually declines starting in the 1960s/70s until it is now back to pre-SEC levels. This matches up with the standard list of US financial crises (as in Reinhart and Rogoff 2009; Reinhart 2010) and supports our hypothesis that the likelihood of a financial crisis increases with deterioration in the quality of shareholder information.