We analyze the incentives of a controlling shareholder of a firm to acquire, directly or indirectly through his firm, shares in a competitor. We charaterize the conditions under which these partial acquisitions are profitable for this dominant shareholder as well as the equilibrium toehold and...

We study horizontal partial ownership arrangements in an oligopolistic industry in the absence of synergies. Contrary to existing results, we find that a dominant shareholder may choose to acquire shares in a competitor although the aggregate profit of the two firms is reduced. This is due to a...

We analyze the efficiency properties of the negligence rule with liability insurance, when the tort-feasor's behavior is imperfectly observable both by the insurer and the court. Efficiency is shown to depend on the extent to which the evidence is informative, on the evidentiary standard for...

We study horizontal partial acquisitions in an oligopolistic industry in the absence of synergies. Contrary to existing results, we find that a dominant shareholder may choose to acquire shares in a competitor although the aggregate profit of the group of firms under his control, and even the...

We provide sufficient conditions for the first-order approach in the principal-agent problem when the agent’s utility has the non-separable form u(y - c(a)) where y is the contractual payoff and c(a) is the money cost of effort. We first consider a decision-maker facing prospects which cost...

This paper studies how moral feelings (hostility or altruism) modify incentive contractsin the Holmström and Milgrom (1990) multi-agent moral hazard model. One agentfeels altruism or hostility towards the other. His objective function is assumed to be aweighted sum of the two certain...