Several contractual situations are such that the parties may 'step out' of negotiations and take up outside opportunities only if there is mutual consent to do so. Examples include employer-employee negotiations, divorce and inheritance procedures, and arbitration. To analyse such cases we...

This paper investigates the relation between asymmetries in the distribution of shares in joint ventures and asymmetries between the parent companies. When the joint venture and the parent companies are controlled by separate entities, we provide a simple formula to compute the optimal ownership...

The prime task of modelling cross-market contagion is to predict the imminence of a pestilent currency crisis. Empirical models are developed here to study the roles and channels of contagion in exchange rate volatilities, in ways which are as economically sound and econometrically simple as...

It is widely believed that seriously excess debt problems form a major cause of the 1997 Asian financial crisis. This paper investigates empirically the role of the debt problems with respect to both the won/$US rate fluctuations and the won collapse in November 1997. The problems are...

Formal standards arise out of deliberations of standards-writing organizations, while de facto standards result from unfettered market processes. Therefore, the formers are of a higher quality and legitimacy, but are slower to develop than the latters. To address this trade-off, we analyze a...