We examine whether firms manipulate their reported earnings after winning investment project bids. China's adoption of the public-private partnership (PPP) provides a unique setting for our analysis. Using the PPP announcements to identify the firms participating in PPP projects, we find that...

Governments and corporations frequently auction assets with embedded real options using both cash and contingent bids. I characterize equilibrium bidding and option exercise strategies, and find that the moral hazard associated with uncontractible investment timing inefficiently and...

This paper analyzes securities auctions for which bidders have an option to acquire information after winning the right to develop a project. The payment in the securities auctions consists of an up-front cash bid and a contingent security bid. The contingent payment distorts investment and...

The owner of a real option does not have the necessary expertise to manage the investment project and needs to contract with an expert in order to exercise the real option. The potential managers (the experts) have private information about their respective cost of investing in the project. The...

This study finds that pro-forma earnings forecasts by bidding firms during acquisitions are associated with a higher likelihood of deal completion, expedited deal closing, and with a lower acquisition premium − but only in stock-financed acquisitions. Analysts also respond to these forecasts...

This paper analyzes a model of investment and return in an economy characterized by information asymmetry between an investor and a manager. The realized value of the uncertain state of nature is the manager's private information. The paper first considers an economy where the manager cannot...

This survey introduces a two-volume, 1,900-page reprint collection of articles recently published by Elsevier/North-Holland journals. Volume 1 begins with a comprehensive overview of the empirical evidence, followed by introductions to the econometrics of event studies and various techniques for...

Reaching an optimal mark-up value in the context of bidding competitions has been a research topic for more than 40 years. The model herein proposed aims to contribute to this debate by identifying and evaluating a specific real option: the option to sign the contract and perform the...

This paper studies how the durability of assets affects financing. We show that more durable assets require larger down payments making them harder to finance, because durability affects the price of assets and hence the overall financing need more than their collateral value. Durability affects...

We employ a sample of 201 freeze-out tender offers (offers of controlling shareholders to buy all public shares) in Israel to examine how investors' decision (to accept or reject the offer) is influenced by alternative reference prices, some of which are commonly specified in freeze-out offers....