If managers maximize the payoffs of their shareholders rather than firm profits, then it may be anticompetitive for a shareholder to own competing firms. This is because a manager?s objective function may place weight on profits of competitors who are held by the same shareholder. Recent...

This paper examines four terms that are used a great deal by economists and demonstrates that they are often misunderstood. Not fully comprehending the meaning of these terms can result in serious problems for society. Thus, Greenspan admitted that not knowing how self-interest works resulted in...

Unlike labor income, human capital is inseparable from individuals and does not accrue to creditors at default. As a consequence, human capital investment should be more resilient to “debt overhang” than labor supply. We develop a dynamic model displaying this important difference. We find...

The authors have developed an easy-to-use approach, derived from financial portfolio theory, for determining which product(s) to eliminate. This approach takes into account the effect the product deletion will have on the overall rate of return and the overall risk of the product portfolio

Size and complexity are viewed as contributing to the too-big-to-fail status of financial institutions. Yet, there is no standard accepted metric for an organization's complexity, much less for a large firm engaged in global finance. We provide perspective on the issue of complexity by examining...

In a segmented waiting-line system, customers are segmented into two groups: those who are willing to wait for service and those who are willing to pay a premium to avoid a long wait. The use of waiting line segmentation has been shown to result in increased profit for the company or...

Firms raise cost-reducing alliances before competing with each other, but cannot fully internalize the shared knowledge. When spillovers are local and transit through the network of alliances, stable architectures with a moderate level of asymmetry are identified.

Ich möchte in diesem Vortrag Beziehungen zwischen Gutenbergs Theorie der Unternehmung, die in seiner Habilitationsschrift angelegt und in den Grundlagen der Betriebswirtschaftslehre entfaltet ist, und aktuellen Entwicklungen in der Theorie der Unternehmung herstellen. Obwohl der Anlaß für...

Fershtman and Judd (1987) and Sklivas (1987) show that strategic delegation reduces firm profits in the one-shot Cournot game. Allowing for infinitely repeated interaction, strategic delegation can increase firm profits as it improves cartel stability.

The starting point of this paper is that the exit of venture-backed firms often takes place through sales to large incumbent firms. We show that in such an environment, venture-backed firms have a stronger incentive to develop basic innovations into commercialized innovations than incumbent...