We provide experimental evidence that nonbinding preplay communication between bidders in auctions of shares facilitates the adoption of equilibrium strategies: collusive strategies in uniform-price auctions, and the unique equilibrium in undominated strategies in discriminatory auctions. When...

The authors analyze the optimal design of debt maturity, coupon payments, and dividend payout restrictions under asymmetric information. They show that, if the asymmetry of information is concentrated around long-term cash flows, firms finance with coupon-bearing long-term debt that partially...

In an asymmetric information framework, a number of authors have demonstrated the existence and uniqueness of short-term debt pooling equilibria in the absence of dissipative costs. We show that short-term debt pooling is robust to a broad range of deviations from stationarity and intertemporal...

This article analyzes an economic experiment designed to measure the effect of “legal technology” on the economic efficiency of Coasian bargaining. In the experiment, the agreement of many agents (called “landowners”) to transfer their property rights to a single agent (called “the...

We model and experimentally examine the board structure-performance relationship. We examine single-tiered boards, two-tiered boards, insider-controlled boards and outsider-controlled boards. We find that even insider-controlled boards frequently adopt institutionally preferred rather than...

This paper embeds security design in a model of evolutionary learning. We consider a competitive and perfect financial market where agents, as in Allen and Gale (1988), have heterogeneous valuations for cash flows. Our point of departure is that, instead of assuming that agents are endowed with...

We examine voting by a board designed to mitigate conflicts of interest between privately informed insiders and owners. Our model demonstrates that, as argued by researchers and the business press, boards with a majority of trustworthy but uninformed "watchdog" agents can implement...

We examine corporate security choice by simulating an economy populated by adaptive agents who learn about the structure of security returns and prices through experience. Through a process of evolutionary selection, each agent gravitates toward strategies that generate the highest payoffs....

Our analysis explains how vulture investors (vultures) can maintain and exploit their rep- utations for toughness. Vultures leverage their reputations to extract concessions from stockholders in debt restructurings. To profit from these concessions, vultures must first acquire debt from...