We provide experimental evidence that non-binding pre-play communication between bidders in auctions of shares facilitates the adoption of equilibrium strategies: collusive strategies in uniform-price auctions, and the unique equilibrium in undominated strategies in discriminatory auctions. When...

It is generally agreed that stockholder/bondholder agency conflicts are an important factor in the determination of corporate debt maturity policies. It has also frequently been argued that agency considerations favor shorter debt maturities. In this paper, we show that if the locus of the...

In this paper we analyze the optimal design of debt- maturity, coupon payments, and dividend payout restrictions under asymmetric information. In our model, if the asymmetry of information is concentrated around long-term cash flows, firms finance with coupon-bearing long-term debt that...

This paper embeds security design in a model of evolutionary learning. We consider a competitive and perfect financial market where agents, as in Allen and Gale (1988), have heterogeneous valuations for cash flows. Our point of departure is that, instead of assuming that agents are endowed with...

We examine corporate security choice by simulating an economy populated by adaptive agents who learn about the structure of security returns and prices through experience. Each agent experiments with different strategies and, through a process of evolutionary selection, gravitates toward...

This paper considers the team management of mutual funds, fund manager ability, performance, and holdings. We find evidence suggesting there is a positive relation between performance and team management concurrent with a negative relation between managerial ability and the use of team...

In the standard principal/agent model, CEO compensation, together with the CEO's unobservable actions and abilities, determines firm performance. We develop an alternative perspective: unobservable firm characteristics, through their effect on firm value and the CEO's utility, determine...

We model corporate governance in a world with competitive securities markets as well as markets for corporate assets. We show that varying the liquidity and opacity of corporate assets, the vitality of the market for corporate control, and the costs of enforcing shareholder rights to cash flows...