The U.S. government has acquired large shareholdings in companies like AIG, GM and others, essentially becoming "owner of last resort" through its defense of the "too big to fail" doctrine. I argue in this Congressional testimony that the government should adopt a pro-active stance in terms of...

This paper tests the hypothesis that horizontal mergers generate positive abnormal returns to stockholders of the bidder and target firms because they increase the probability of successful collusion among rival producers. Under the collusion hypothesis, rivals of the merging firms benefit from...

We examine the expected economic benefits of mergers and acquisitions. We conclude that both signaling and revelation biases are responsible for the commonly reported finding that on average takeovers are harmful to bidder shareholder wealth. After accounting for these two biases that lead to a...