We provide a theory of informal communication-cheap talk-between firms and capital markets that incorporates the role of agency conflicts between managers and shareholders. The analysis suggests that a policy of discretionary disclosure that encourages managers to attract the market's attention...

We examine voting by a board designed to mitigate conflicts of interest between privately informed insiders and owners. Our model demonstrates that, as argued by researchers and the business press, boards with a majority of trustworthy but uninformed "watchdogs" can implement institutionally...

We consider a competitive and perfect financial market in which agents have heterogeneous cash flow valuations. Instead of assuming that agents are endowed with rational expectations, we model their behavior as the product of adaptive learning. Our results demonstrate that adaptive learning...

We examine corporate security choice by simulating an economy populated by adaptive agents who learn about the structure of security returns and prices through experience. Through a process of evolutionary selection, each agent gravitates toward strategies that generate the highest payoffs....