This study presents a dynamic model for the private equity market in which information revelation and uncertainty rationally explain the cyclical pattern of investment flows into private equity. The net benefit of private equity over public equity is i) uncertain and ii) agents have private...

Boards of directors face the twin task of disciplining and screening executives. To perform these tasks directors do not have detailed information about executives' behaviour, and only infrequently have information about the success or failure of initiated strategies, reorganizations, mergers...

An interlock between two firms occurs if the firms share one or more directors in their boards of directors. We explore the effect of interlocks on firm performance for 101 large Dutch firms using a large and new panel database. We use five different performance measures, and for each...

This paper uses a unified treatment of real options and game theory to examine value appropriation in takeovers within a competitive environment of imperfect information. The integrated model considers a potential target as a shared real option on a bundle of resources. Competing potential...

Do shareholders of acquiring companies profit from acquisitions, or do acquiring CEOs overbid and destroy shareholder value? Answering this question is difficult since the hypothetical counterfactual is hard to determine. We exploit merger contests to address the identification issue. In those...

Legislation affects corporate governance and the return to human and financial capital. We allow the preference of a political majority to determine both the governance structure and the extent of labor rents. In a society where median voters have relatively more at stake in the form of human...

We analyze the dynamics of takeover contests where hostile raiders compete against white knights involved by a lead blockholder of the target firm (the incumbent). We assume that the incumbent has the power to bargain with the potential bidders to set a minimum takeover price. We characterize...

This paper explains why consolidation acquisitions occur in waves and it predicts the differing role each firm is likely to play in the consolidation game. We propose that whether a firm assumes the role of rival consolidator, target, or passive observer depends on the position of the firm...

We analyze the economic forces underlying cross-border Mergers and Acquistions (M&As) using a large bilateral panel data set. The frequent occurrence of "zero" observations provides essential information on the structure of M&A flows, which we model empirically using a two-stage procedure. At...

We allow the preference of a political majority to determine both the corporate governance structure and the division of profits between human and financial capital. In a democratic society where financial wealth is concentrated, a political majority may prefer to restrain governance by...