This paper considers irreversible investment in competing research projects with uncertain returns under a winner-takes-all patent system. Uncertainty takes two distinct forms: the technological success of the project is probabilistic, while the economic value of the patent to be won evolves...

This Paper examines irreversible investment in a project with uncertain returns, when there is an advantage to being the first to invest, and externalities to investing when others also do so. Pre-emption decreases and may even eliminate the option values created by irreversibility and...

This Paper considers the 'failing firm defence'. Under this principle, found in most antitrust jurisdictions, a merger that would otherwise be blocked due to its adverse effect on competition is permitted when the firm to be acquired is a failing firm, and an alternative, less detrimental merger...

This paper examines irreversible investment in a project with uncertain returns, when there is an advantage to being the first to invest and externalities to investing when others also do so. We show that the possibility of pre-emption can have significant qualitative and quantitative effects on...

Empirical studies have found that takeover activity is positively related to the absolute size of industry-level shocks. In this paper we develop a dynamic framework to analyze the timing of takeover which explains this pattern. Takeover may create value either by exploiting synergies or through...

This paper examines the irreversible adoption of a technology whose returns are uncertain, when there is an advantage to being the first adopter, but a network advantage to adopting when others also adopt. There are two main results. First, conditional on adoption being sequential, the follower...