Financial intermediary-coalitions (Q1072421)

An environment in which the investment opportunities of agents are private information is studied and it is shown that financial intermediaries arise endogenously within that environment. It is established that financial intermediaries are part of an efficient arrangement in the sense that they are needed to support the authors' private information core allocations. These intermediaries, which are coalitions of agents, exhibit the following characteristics in equlibrium: they borrow from and lend to large groups of agents; they produce information about investment projects; and they issue claims that have different state contingent payoffs than claims issued by ultimate borrowers.