Starting from Schelling (1960), several game theorists have conjectured that payoff equity might facilitate coordination in normal-form games with multiple equilibria - the more equitable equilibrium might be selected either because fairness makes it focal or because many individuals dislike...

This paper examines the effect of imperfect labor market competition on the efficiency of compensation schemes in a setting with moral hazard and risk-averse agents who have private information on their ability. Two heterogenous firms - characterized by vertical, respectively horizontal,...

I develop a model of strategic entry by candidates for office in runoff elections under aggregate uncertainty. I introduce aggregate uncertainty by making candidates unsure of the distribution of voter preferences in the electorate. The set of three candidate equilibria expands and equilibrium...

We study the long-run behavior of an economy where agents who are heterogeneous with respect to risk attitudes can either earn a certain income or enter a risky rent seeking contest. In contrast with standard evolutionary game theory, we distinguish between utility and material payoffs, and...

A standard tournament contract specifies only tournament prizes. If agents' performance is measured on a cardinal scale, the principal can complement the tournament contract by a gap which defines the minimum distance by which the best performing agent must beat the second best to receive the...

A main prediction of agency theory is the well known risk-incentive trade-off. Incentive contracts should be found in environments with little uncertainty and for agents with low degrees of risk aversion. There is an ongoing debate in the literature about the first trade-off. Due to lack of...

We investigate the risk choices of risk averse CEOs. Following recent theoretical work, we expect CEO risk aversion to be more pronounced in firms with high leverage, or high default probability. We find that the CEOs of these firms reduce firm risk, even in the presence of strong risk taking...

We discuss the valuation of credit derivatives in extreme regimes such as when the time-to-maturity is short, or when payoff is contingent upon a large number of defaults, as with senior tranches of collateralized debt obligations. In these cases, risk aversion may play an important role,...

Using a sample of 3,688 mergers and acquisitions over the period of 1992 to 2005, we find that post-merger equity risk declines roughly 18% in the year after the announcement. We find that post-merger equity risk is negatively related to the sensitivity of CEO wealth to stock return volatility...