IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ecm/emetrp/v72y2004i4p1023-1061.html

Financial Intermediaries and Markets

Author

Listed:
  • Franklin Allen
  • Douglas Gale

Abstract

A complex financial system comprises both financial markets and financial intermediaries. We distinguish financial intermediaries according to whether they issue complete contingent contracts or incomplete contracts. Intermediaries such as banks that issue incomplete contracts, e.g., demand deposits, are subject to runs, but this does not imply a market failure. A sophisticated financial system-a system with complete markets for aggregate risk and limited market participation-is incentive-efficient, if the intermediaries issue complete contingent contracts, or else constrained-efficient, if they issue incomplete contracts. We argue that there may be a role for regulating liquidity provision in an economy in which markets for aggregate risks are incomplete. Copyright The Econometric Society 2004.

Suggested Citation

  • Franklin Allen & Douglas Gale, 2004. "Financial Intermediaries and Markets," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 72(4), pages 1023-1061, July.
  • Handle: RePEc:ecm:emetrp:v:72:y:2004:i:4:p:1023-1061
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/j.1468-0262.2004.00525.x
    File Function: link to full text
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ecm:emetrp:v:72:y:2004:i:4:p:1023-1061. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/essssea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.