There is a general consensus that the root cause of the most recent turmoil in the domestic and global markets is due to a failure in our regulatory system. Yet, Congress has not supported comprehensive regulation related to the day-to-day activities of mortgage brokers and their relationship...

Consider legal uncertainty as uncertainty about the legality of a specific action. In particular, suppose that the threshold of legality is uncertain. I show that this legal uncertainty raises welfare. Legal uncertainty changes deterrence in opposite directions. The probability of conviction...

We analyze a college admissions game with asymmetric information between students and colleges. Students' preferences for colleges depend on the observable quality of the schools. In contrast, colleges' preferences for students depend on the latter's abilities, which are private information....

Negotiations between buyers and suppliers that require sharing cost details to identify profitable relationship specific investments often fail and result in hold-ups. Based on inequity aversion, strategic uncertainty, and risk dominance criteria, we expect negotiators to be more reluctant to...

This paper examines the phenomenon of management-initiated, court-supervised reorganization of companies in U.S. bankruptcy court. The proposed in-court persuasion mechanism reconciles excessive reorganizations of non-viable companies (and subsequent repeat failures) with management-initiated...

This paper presents a model in which fund managers choose between active management and passive management when investors cannot directly observe managers' efforts and skills. In an equilibrium skilled managers actively manage their funds only when skills can add a large value in active...

Some labor markets have recently developed formal signalling mechanisms, e.g. the signalling for interviews in the job market for new Ph.D. economists. We evaluate the effect of such mechanisms on two-sided matching markets by considering a game of incomplete information between firms and...

Several labor markets, including the job market for new Ph.D. economists, have recently developed formal signaling mechanisms. We show that such mechanisms are harmful for some environments. While signals transmit previously unavailable information, they also facilitate information asymmetry...

Investor uncertainty about firm value drives investors' information collection and trading activities, as well as managers' disclosure choices. This study examines an important source of uncertainty that likely cannot be influenced by most managers and investors: uncertainty about government...

In simple textbook treatment of bilateral exchange traders end up on the contract curve such that the trading surplus is maximized regardless of any asymmetric bargaining power they might have. However, that need not be true when the terms of exchange are determined by uncooperative bargaining,...