This paper provides a simple reduced-form framework for analyzing merger decisions in the presence of asymmetric information about firm types, building on Shapiro's (1986) oligopoly model with asymmetric information about marginal costs. We employ this framework to examine what types of firms...

We consider a setting in which two potential merger partners each possess private information pertaining both to the profitability of the merged entity and to stand-alone profits, and investigate the extent to which this private information makes ex-post regret an unavoidable phenomenon in...

The paper analyzes the effects of more intense competition on firms' incentives to invest in process innovations. We carry out experiments based on two-stage games, where Ramp;D investment choices are followed by product market competition. As predicted by theory, an increase in the number of...

Are initial competitive advantages self-reinforcing, so that markets exhibit an endogenous tendency to be dominated by only a few firms? Although this question is of great economic importance, no systematic empirical study has yet addressed it. Therefore, we examine experimentally whether firms...

This paper analyzes two-stage rank-order tournaments. A principal decides (i) how to spread prize money across the two periods, (ii) how to weigh performance in the two periods when awarding the second-period prize, and (iii) whether to reveal performance after the … first period. The...

To examine the impact of globalization on managerial remuneration, we consider a matching model where firms compete both in the product market and in the managerial market. We show that globalization, i.e., the simultaneous integration of product markets and managerial pools, leads to an...

This paper analyzes intertemporal effort provision in two-stage tournaments. A principal with a fixed budget for prizes faces two risk-neutral agents. He observes noisy signals of effort in both periods. His goal is to maximize either total efforts (perfect substitutes) or the product of first-...

To examine the impact of globalization on managerial compensation, we consider a matching model where firms compete both in the product market and in the managerial market. We show that globalization, that is, the simultaneous integration of product markets and managerial pools, leads to an...