In this article we model the financing decisions of a firm as a sequential signaling game. We prove that, when insiders have perfect information regarding the firm's future case flows, the application of 'refinements' to the set of admissible equilibria leads to the dominance of debt over equity...

This study reviews papers from the Eastern Finance Association's Symposium on Corporate Finance, Incentives, and Strategy. I identify the common themes underlying these papers and place the studies in the broader context of contemporary academic finance research. Further, I discuss new...

Securities trading has generated some of the most sensational scandals in the popular business press. In one of the most publicized cases of insider trading, in the late 1980s Michael R. Milken and Ivan F. Boesky were sentenced to stiff prison terms and payment of enormous damage assessments and...

This article features a review of the book "The Theory of Corporate Finance" by Michael J. Brennan.

We model long-run firm performance, management compensation, and corporate governance in a dynamic, nonstationary world. Many features of governance and compensation that have caused consternation among commentators arise naturally in this dynamic setting, even though boards are rational and...

Short-term financial claims held by uninformed outside investors impose a tax on insider opportunism by diluting the ownership stake of opportunistic owner-managers. By thus limiting managerial opportunism, short-term financing increases firm value and social welfare. When given a choice,...

This article models, and experimentally simulates, the free-rider problem in a takeover when the raider has the option to “resolicit,” that is, to make a new offer after an offer has been rejected. In theory, the option to resolicit, by lowering offer credibility, increases the dissipative...

This article addresses the problem faced by a regulated natural monopolist who must raise outside funds to finance socially desirable projects. We demonstrate that fair rate of return utility price regulation will lead to underinvestment incentives in the presence of asymmetric information...

Under asymmetric information regarding the quality of investment opportunities and a tax advantage to debt, it is demonstrated that a separating equilibrium in which higher-quality firms issue equity and lower-quality firms issue debt may exist. Thus, the ‘pecking order’ theory may break...

Researchers have argued that financial distress costs and corporate tax shields can induce value-maximizing corporations to hedge their operating cash flows. We demonstrate that, for a fixed level of debt in the capital structure, the presence of personal income taxation and corporate non-debt...