We model activism as it affects the future distribution of prices in a portfolio context with risk-averse expected utility of end-of-period wealth maximizing investors. We characterize activism as affecting the mean, the variance, and/or the covariance of the target firm’s price with the...

We consider a continuum of agents in a transition country where the transfer of property rights has occurred. The transition is in progress and the nature of the government's future policies is unknown to the agents. Agents believe that the present government can evolve into one of two types: a...

We consider agents in a country in an early stage of transition from a planned to a market economy. As the transition is in progress, the nature of the government's policies are unknown to the agents. Property rights once held by the state have already been transferred to the agents, with each...

We consider a financial market equilibrium with correlated firms, risk averse investors holding diversified portfolios, and an activist investor who has the ability to perform value-enhancing activities that increase with ownership. By combining a standard financial market equilibrium with a...

A privatization authority (PA) wishes to establish industries and find buyers for firms it creates in those industries. Agents, facing a privatization plan specifying the percentage of ownership offered, payment (subsidy) required, and number of firms per industry, maximize expected utility...

We propose a new procedure to rank portfolio performance. Given a set of N portfolios, we use statistical tests of dominance which produce direct mean-variance comparisons between any two portfolios in the set. These tests yield an NxN matrix of pairwise comparisons. A ranking function maps the...

Political Uncertainty and Crime in Transition Economies Two stylized facts are often used to characterize the economies in transition: an increase in the crime level and frequent government changes, where the party in power is replaced by another party with a different, and often opposite,...

We study two governments, each considering whether or not to compete to attract a foreign monopoly firm into its own domestic market. The competition, should it occur, would involve offering incentives to the firm. The incentives, which are costly for the governments to provide, lower the firm...

We investigate the claim that the establishment of property rights in an economy in transition would create its own demand for the enforcement of laws to protect those rights. Our model contains a government seeking activities to accomplish certain objectives that depend on public support for...

We study two governments, each considering whether or not to compete to attract a foreign monopoly firm into its own domestic market. The competition, should it occur, would involve offering incentives to the firm. The incentives, which are costly for the governments to provide, lower the firm...