This note points out the differences between conducting several projects within one big firm (common ownership) and conducting each project within an independent firm (separate ownership).

I consider a situation, where the agent can acquire payoff-relevant information either before or after the contract is signed. To raise efficiency, the principal might solicit information; to retain all surplus, however, she must prevent precontractual information gathering. The following class...

This paper analyzes optimal incentive contracts for information acquisition and revelation. A decision maker faces the problem to design a contract that provides an expert with incentives to acquire and reveal information. We show that it is in general not optimal to reward the expert if his...

This paper analyzes truthtelling incentives in pre-vote communication in heterogeneous committees. We generalize the classical Condorcet jury model by introducing a new informational structure that captures consistency of information. In contrast to the impossibility result shown by Coughlan...

We formulate a dynamic learning-and-adjustment model of a market in which sellers choose signals that potentially reveal their types. If the dynamic process selects a unique limiting outcome, then that outcome must be an undefeated equilibrium; though to be undefeated does not suffice to be the...

Firms face the problem of choosing a debt maturity structure when financing an investment project. In addition, they have to decide which financing source to take. The aim of this article is firstly to give an explanation for the differing maturity choices by firms. As is shown below, the...

The financial structure of firms is diverse. Firms issue many different types of financial claims. This article focuses on the seniority structure of debt contracts. It is outlined under what conditions firms can improve the outcome of their financial decisions by choosing seniority structure....

Within the Internal Ratings-Based (IRB) approach of Basel II it is assumed that idiosyncratic risk has been fully diversi?ed away. The impact of undiversi?ed idiosyncratic risk on portfolio Value-at-Risk can be quanti?ed via a granularity adjustment (GA). We provide an analytic formula for the...

We show that the saddle-point approximation method to quantify the impact of undiversi?ed idiosyncratic risk in a credit portfolio is inappropriate in the presence of double default effects. Speci?cally, we prove that there does not exist an equivalent formula to the granularity adjustment, that...

In 2005 the Internal Ratings Based (IRB) approach of `Basel II' was enhanced by a `treatment of double default effects' to account for credit risk mitigation techniques such as ordinary guarantees or credit derivatives. This paper reveals several severe problems of this approach and presents a...