Cream-Skimming in Financial Markets

We propose a model in which investors may choose to acquire costly information that identifies good assets and purchase these assets in opaque (OTC) markets. Uninformed investors access an asset pool that has been cream-skimmed by informed investors. When the quality composition of assets for sale is fixed, there is too much information acquisition and the financial industry extracts excessive rents. In the presence of moral hazard in origination, the social value of information varies inversely with information acquisition. Low quality origination is associated with large rents in the financial sector. Equilibrium acquisition of information is generically inefficient.