A model of security design based on the principle of information aggregation and alignment is used to show that (i) firms needing to finance their operations should issue different securities to different groups of investors in order to aggregate their disparate information and (ii) each security should be highly correlated (closely aligned) with the private information signal of the investor to whom it is marketed. This alignment reduces the adverse selection penalty paid by a firm with superior information. Adverse selection costs are often contingent on ex post publicly observable and contractible state variables such as exchange rates. In such cases, debt contracts are dominated by currency swaps and optimal securities, in general, are derivative contracts that are contingent on state variables that influence adverse selection costs. This is because the netting of cash flows in these derivative contracts, in effect, alters the state-by-state seniority of different claims in a desirable way.
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Cooper, Ian A & Mello, Antonio S, 1991.
" The Default Risk of Swaps,"
Journal of Finance,
American Finance Association, vol. 46(2), pages 597-620, June.
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Franklin Allen, Douglas Gale, 1988.
"Optimal Security Design,"
Review of Financial Studies,
Oxford University Press for Society for Financial Studies, vol. 1(3), pages 229-263.
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Other versions:
Boot, Arnoud W A & Thakor, Anjan V, 1993.
" Security Design,"
Journal of Finance,
American Finance Association, vol. 48(4), pages 1349-78, September.
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Other versions:
Arnoud W A Boot & Anjan V Thakor, 1992.
"Security Design,"
CEPR Financial Markets Paper
0020, European Science Foundation Network in Financial Markets, c/o C.E.P.R, 53--56 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DG.