This paper studies how media and the quality of institutions affect government action taken before and after a natural disaster. The key elements in this relationship are the media's role as the provider of information to voters about government action, the quality of democracy that pertains to...

In a typical corporate hierarchy, the manager is delegated the authority to make strategic decisions, and to contract with other employees. By studying a model with one principal and two agents where one agent can gather information that is valuable for the principal's project choice and the...

This paper studies internal organization of a firm using an incomplete contracting approach `a la Grossman-Hart-Moore and Aghion-Tirole. The two key ingredients of our model are externalities among tasks that require coordination, and investment in task-specific human capital. We compare three...

In a typical corporate hierarchy, the manager is delegated the authority to make strategic decisions, and to contract with other employees. We study when such delegation can be optimal. In centralization, the owner retains the authority, which fails to motivate the manager to acquire valuable...

We study a voluntary pre-merger notification game under asymmetric information and characterize perfect Bayesian equilibria. It is shown that the equilibrium outcomes are similar to those when notification is compulsory. However, thanks to the signaling opportunity that arises when notification...

This paper studies theoretically and empirically the relation among CEO power, CEO compensation and firm performance. Our theoretical model follows the rent extraction view of CEO compensation put forward by the managerial power theory, and proxies CEO power by the bargaining power the CEO...

We study an optimal contracting problem when the manager has self-esteem concerns and access to a hedging market. We show that the manager's equilibrium hedging position increases when he is more risk-averse, more uncertain about his own ability, or has stronger self-esteem concerns. Each...

This paper studies the information transmission aspect of influence activities within an organization where privately informed division managers strategically communicate divisional information to headquarters to influence its capital allocation decisions. Although costly, influence activities...

We estimate the effect of corporate diversification on firm value using a sample of 766 segment-year observations during 2004 – 2008 for firms listed on the Australian Stock Exchange as of August 2009. In addition to conventionally used measures of diversification, we develop five new measures...

The arm’s length principle states that the transfer price between two associated enterprises should be the price that would be paid for similar goods in similar circumstances by unrelated parties dealing at arm’s length with each other. This paper examines the effect of the arm’s length...