Showing 1 - 10 of 12
A liquidity-constrained entrepreneur raises capital to finance a business activity that may harm bystanders. The entrepreneur raises senior (secured) debt to shield assets from the tort victims in bankruptcy. For a fixed level of borrowing, senior debt creates better incentives for precaution...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005686517
Two roles for stipulated damage provisions have been debated in the literature: protecting relationship-specific investments and inefficiently excluding competitors. Aghion and Bolton (1987) formally demonstrate the latter effect in a model without investment or renegotiation. Although...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005353792
This article presents a principal-agent model in which asymmetric information leads to contractual incompleteness. I show that in the presence of transactions costs, incompleteness may act as a signal of the principal's type. Two types of transactions costs are considered: those incurred ex ante...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005357031
Legal rules for allocating the private costs of civil litigation, or "fee-shifting" rules, provide powerful incentives for settlement. Within the context of a direct-revelation mechanism, the fee-shifting rule that generates the highest probability of settlement bases the allocation of costs...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005146412
The operating agreements of many business ventures include clauses to facilitate the exit of joint owners. In so-called Texas Shootouts, one owner names a single buy-sell price and the other owner is compelled to either buy or sell shares at that named price. Despite their prevalence in...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10008751845
In this article, I study how the presence of a revolving door and potential collusion between a regulator and a regulated firm affect the regulator's performance incentives. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, these seemingly undesirable features of the regulatory system may serve the interests...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005353942
We examine the value of incorporating regulatory information into the court liability decision and making it publicly available when the causality of harm is uncertain. Public access to regulatory information, coupled with its use in a liability decision, not only improves the accuracy of court...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005357104
This article studies design competition in government procurements by developing a model of two-dimensional auctions, where firms bid on both price and quality, and bids are evaluated by a scoring rule designed by a buyer. Three auction schemes -- first score, second score, and second preferred...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005170769
A "decoupled" liability system is one in which the award to the plaintiff differs from the payment by the defendant. The optimal system of decoupling makes the defendant's payment as high as possible. Such a policy allows the award to the plaintiff to be lowered, thereby reducing the plaintiff's...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005732293
We study competitive procurement administered by a corrupt agent who is willing to manipulate his evaluation of contract proposals in exchange for bribes. With complete information and no corruption, the efficient firm will win the contract for sure. If the agent is corrupt and has large...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005732378