The ability of a portfolio manager to deliver higher returns with relatively low risk is a fundamental issue in finance. We analyze here the performance of a portfolio manager under two different types of constraints. For a manager with private information, we compare the effect of value at risk...

We build a model of an IPO for firms with private information about their earnings profile over time and test the model’s predictions using a complete sample of newly listed Chinese companies between 1992 and 2007. The model predicts that IPO size is positively correlated with short-term...

This paper analyzes asymmetrically informed litigants' incentives to settle when they anticipate the possibility of appeals. It identifies a strategic effect, which induces a litigant to negotiate pretrial so as to optimize her posttrial bargaining position, and an information effect, which...

This paper shows that asymmetric information about the timing of earnings can affect corporate capital structure. It sheds some new light on two following questions: why may profitable firms be interested in issuing equity, and why does debt not necessarily signal a firm quality. These issues...

An agent can make an observable but non-contractible investment. A principal then offers to collaborate with the agent to provide a public good. Private information of the agent about his valuation may either decrease or increase his investment incentives, depending on whether he learns his type...

This economic experiment tests the positive relationship between perceived intention and positive reciprocity by altering material-payoff structures in treatments, or material-payoff approach. To design the treatments, this study applies a signalling model to explain how the intention of an...

This article explores the specific contribution of recent literature on incomplete contracts in comparison with the acontractual Walrasian general equilibrium as well as the complete optimal contracts of the Agency theory regarding the institutional identity of agents. It underlines a tension...

This paper incorporates learning and reputation building into a simple dynamic stochastic model of international trade with asymmetric information. We use the model to study a bilateral trade flow influenced significantly by learning and reputation, namely U.S. imports of Japanese cars over the...

We present a Theory of Contracts under costly enforcement in the context of a dynamic relationship between an uninformed buyer and a seller who is privately informed on his persistent cost at the outset. Public enforcement relies on remedies for breach. Private enforcement comes from severing...

This paper presents an agency theory of revolutionary political transitions from autocracy to democracy. We model authoritarian economic policy as the equilibrium outcome of a repeated game between an elite ruling class and a disenfranchised working class, in which workers have imperfect...