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...

Published in the <I>Journal of Reviews on Global Economics</I> (2013). Volume 2, pages 307-329.<P> Economists and financial analysts have begun to recognise the importance of the actions of other agents in the decision-making process. Herding is the deliberate mimicking of the decisions of other agents....</p></i>

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...

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 allow the preference of a political majority to determine boththe corporate governance structure and the division of profits betweenhuman and financial capital. In a democratic society where financialwealth is concentrated, a political majority may prefer to restraingovernance by dispersed...

See also the article 'Mean and bold: on separating merger economies from structural efficiency gains in the drinking water sector' 2010, <I>The Journal of the Operational Research Society</I>, 61, 222-34.<P> The Dutch drinking water sector experienced two drastic changes over the last 10 years. Firstly,...</p></i>

This paper investigates empirically the illiquidity of majority blocks of shares in the context of a search model of block trades. The search model incorporates two aspects of illiquidity, or search frictions. First, upon a liquidity shock, the incumbent blockholders may be forced to sell to a...

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 discussion paper led to a publication in <A href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1544612310000176"><I>Finance Research Letters</I></A>, 7(2), 127-34.<P>We argue that the recent corporate governance reform in the Netherlands provides a natural experiment to explore the impact of changes in corporate governance on financing policy. We find that, relative to a...</p></i></a>