Shareholder agreements govern the relations among shareholders in privately-held companies, such as joint ventures or venture capital-backed firms. We provide an economic explanation for the use of put and call options, pre-emption rights, catch-up clauses, drag-along rights, demand rights, and...

This paper provides a comparative analysis of pension plan allocations to private equity and to venture capital in the United States and in Canada. Although the assets of American funds in our data are worth 10 times those of Canadian funds, their investment in private equity is about 20 times...

This paper analyzes the effect of a possible takeover on information flows and on the terms of trade in business relationships. We consider a long-term relationship between a firm and a privately informed stakeholder, say a buyer. In our model, takeovers both increase the surplus from trade and...

Shareholder agreements govern the relations among shareholders in privately-held companies, such as joint ventures or venture capital-backed firms. We provide an economic explanation for the use of put and call options, preemption rights, catch-up clauses, drag-along rights, demand rights,...

We analyze the impact of takeover threats on long term relationships between the target owners and other stakeholders. In the absence of takeovers, stakeholders' bargaining power increases their incentive to invest but reduces the owners' incentive to invest. The threat of a takeover that would...

This paper analyzes the interactions between competitive (wholesale) spot, retail, and forward markets and vertical integration in electricity markets. We develop an equilibrium model with producers, retailers, and traders that enables us to quantify the impact of forward markets and vertical...

Shareholder agreements govern the relations among shareholders in privately-held firms, such as joint ventures or venture capital-backed firms. We provide an explanation for the use of put and call options, tag-along rights, drag-along rights, demand rights, piggy-back rights, and catch-up...

In recent years, policy experiments using large microeconomic datasets have gained ground in macroeconomics. Imposing rational expectations, we examine robustness of evidence derived from ideal natural experiments applied to atomistic agents in dynamic settings. Paradoxically, once experimental...

Defined benefit pension plans backed by firms with high R&D expenditures and high land and buildings (L&B) holdings exhibit high private equity and real estate investment, respectively. Within these asset classes, plans with R&D (L&B) intensive sponsoring firms overweigh venture capital...

While firms have obtained outside financing from large numbers of investors on financial markets for centuries, online crowdfunding platforms have only emerged as a major source of funding for start-ups and new projects for a decade. The information available to backers on crowdfunding platforms...