We investigate experimentally how the share of experienced traders in double-auction asset markets affects trading, in particular the occurrence of bubble-crash pricing patterns. In each session, six subjects trade in three successive market rounds and gain experience. In a fourth round,...

This paper evaluates partial acquisition strategies. The model allows for buying a share of a firm before the actual acquisition takes place. Holding a share in a competing firm before the acquisition of another firm, outsider-toehold, eliminates the insiders' dilemma, i.e. profitable mergers do...

Theoretically, cross ownership may mitigate mergers, i.e. market concentrations. Holding a share in a competing firm before the acquisition of another firm, outsider-toehold, is more profitable in some market constellations, due to the positive externality on the outsider (competing) firm when a...

This paper tests the insiders' dilemma hypothesis in a laboratory experiment. The insiders' dilemma means that a profitable merger does not occur, because it is even more profitable for each firm to unilaterally stand as an outsider (Kamien and Zang, 1990 and 1993). The experimental data...