Study of the impact of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) on productivity and market power has been complicated by the difficulty of separating these two effects. We use newly-developed techniques to separately estimate productivity and markups across a wide range of industries using detailed...

This paper presents a multi-district model that can be calibrated to data reflecting housing market conditions, public school finance mechanisms and private school markets. Simulations are undertaken to investigate the impact of private school vouchers. Households that differ in both their...

We examine the role of spillover learning in shaping the value of exploratory versus incremental R&D. Using data from drug development, we show that novel drug candidates generate more knowledge spillovers than incremental ones. Despite being less likely to reach regulatory approval, they are...

Information spillovers between firms can reduce R&D incentives if competitors can free ride on innovations. However, strong property rights may impede cumulative research and lead to inefficient duplication. These effects are particularly relevant in natural resource exploration, where...

We study the interplay between a "one person-one vote" political system and a "one share-one vote" corporate governance regime. The political system sets Pigouvian subsidies, while corporate governance determines firm-specific public good investments. Our analysis highlights a two-way feedback...

Textbook theory assumes that firm managers maximize the net present value of future cash flows. But when you ask them, real-world firm managers consistently say that they are maximizing something else entirely: earnings per share (EPS). Perhaps this is a mistake. No matter. We take firm managers...

To understand the disruption and implications of distributed ledger technologies for financial reporting and auditing, we analyze firm misreporting, auditor monitoring and competition, and regulatory policy in a unified model. A federated blockchain for financial reporting and auditing can...

Secured lenders have recently demanded a new condition in distressed debt restructurings: competing secured lenders must lose priority. We model the implications of this "creditor-on-creditor violence" trend. In our dynamic model, secured lenders enjoy higher priority in default. However,...

This paper studies the impact of technological change and regulatory competition on governmental efforts to generate rents for banks in two stylized regulatory environments. In the first environment, incentive-conflicted regulators attempt to create rents by restricting the size and scope of...

In this paper we review issues relating to antitrust and competition in health care markets. The paper begins with a brief review of antitrust legislation. We then discuss whether and how health care is different from other industries in ways that might affect the optimality of competition. The...