The number of firm bankruptcies is surprisingly low in economies with poor institutions. We study a model of bank-firm relationship and show that the bank's decision to liquidate bad firms has two opposing effects. First, the bank gets a payoff if a firm is liquidated. Second, it loses the rent...

I present a model in which individuals compete for a prize by choosing to apply or not. Abilities are private information and in attempt to select the best candidate, the committee compares applicants with an imperfect technology. The choice of application cost, size of the prize and use of...

In an industry where regulated firms interact with unregulated suppliers, we investigate the welfare effects of a merger between regulated firms when cost synergies are uncertain before the merger and their realization becomes private information of the merged firm. The optimal merger policy...