We analyze control transfers in firms with a dominant minority blockholder and otherwise dispersed owners, and show that the transaction mode is important. Negotiated block trades preserve a low level of ownership concentration, inducing more inefficient extraction of private benefits. In...

type="main" <title type="main">ABSTRACT</title> <p>This paper examines the role of legal investor protection for the efficiency of the market for corporate control when bidders are financially constrained. In the model, stronger legal investor protection increases bidders' outside funding capacity. However, absent effective...</p>

We present a model of succession in a firm owned and managed by its founder. The founder decides between hiring a professional manager or leaving management to his heir, as well as on what fraction of the company to float on the stock exchange. We assume that a professional is a better manager...

Within the context of takeovers, this paper shows that in private-value auctions the optimal individually rational strategy for a bidder with partial ownership of the item is to overbid, i.e., to bid more than his valuation. This strategy, however, can lead to an inefficient outcome and the...