We develop a theory of optimal financing for R&D-intensive firms. With only market financing, the firm relies exclusively on equity financing and carries excess cash, but underinvests in R&D. We use mechanism design to examine how intermediated financing can attentuate this underinvestment. The...

By means of a company merger formerly legally and economically independent companies are tied up to an economic entity. To order the financial state of affairs after the merger, the current shareholders must revalue their stake in the merged company. The interest is focused on the valuation of...

Business groups in emerging markets perform better than unaffiliated firms. One explanation is that business groups substitute some functions of missing institutions, for example, enforcing contracts. We investigate this by setting up a model where firms within the business group are connected...

We use a dynamic model of cash management in which firms face competitive pressure to show that competition increases corporate cash holdings as well as the frequency and size of equity issues. In our model, these effects are driven by small, financially constrained firms, in contrast with the...

A common method of valuing the equity in highly leveraged transactions is the flows-to-equity method. When applying this method various formulas can be used to calculate the time-varying cost of equity. In this paper we show that some commonly used formulas are inconsistent with the assumptions...

We develop a dynamic model of corporate investment and financing decisions in which corporate insiders have superior information about the firm's growth prospects. We show that firms with positive private information can credibly signal their type to outside investors using the timing of...

Though mergers and acquisitions comprise a significant share of aggregate economic activity in the US, researchers disagree on the effect and importance of M&A determinants. Such disagreement stems from adherence to disparate theoretical models that preclude the use of significant explanatory...

Textbook theory assumes that firm managers maximize the net present value of future cash flows. But when you ask them, the people running large public corporations say that they are maximizing something else entirely: earnings per share (EPS). Perhaps this is a mistake. No matter. We take...

This paper examines the agency cost of winner-picking in multi-divisional firms and uses explicit incentive contracts to analyze the interaction between corporate headquarters' investment and incentive policies. Winner-picking, i.e. the efficient reallocation of scarce resources in an internal...

The accuracy of firm information disclosures and the efficiency of long-term investment both play crucial roles in the economy and capital markets. We estimate a dynamic model that captures a trade-off between these two goals that arises when managers confront realistic incentives to misreport...