We analyze the impact of verifiability on how signals about agents are used to mitigate adverse selection. We show that if signals are verifiable the observed practice of collecting information about agents before contracting is inferior to writing contingent contracts. This holds regardless of...

This document describes the spreadsheets and the related textual narratives that we have developed for FSA and valuation. These spreadsheets and their related documents are available for free at http://www.godeohlson.com/. These spreadsheets can be used for two purposes: (1) teaching FSA and...

Valuation techniques are important to practitioners and academics. Although theoretically equity value equals the present value of expected dividends, in practice, higher-level metrics such as free cash flows, earnings, and book values are used for valuation. This paper helps us understand these...

We generalize Ohlson's (1995) model to stochastic interest rates while making no specific assumptions about the stochastic process of interest rates. Our analysis of the case when earnings suffice for valuation yields three insights. (1) In the valuation function, the multiplier for forthcoming...

We estimate implied cost of equity capital for a sample of firms from 1984 to 1998 using the Ohlson and Juettner (2000) model that does not make restrictive assumptions about clean surplus and payout policies. We find that cost of equity capital is strongly positively associated with...

We show that the greater the extent to which a performance measure matches delivered performance, the simpler and more robust are the compensation plans based on it. In some settings stock price changes match delivered performance poorly because they anticipate it. This introduces three problems...

How should one conceptualize price-earnings multiples (earnings capitalization factors) when interest rates change stochastically? The paper shows that while the multiplier for forthcoming earnings depends on current rates, the multiplier for current earnings depends on lagged rates. With these...

We generalize Ohlson (1995) to stochastic interest rates. Our analysis provides four insights. First, the earnings capitalization multiple depends on the lagged rate, not the current rate. Second, the abnormal earnings persistence parameter increases in the current rate and decreases in the...

In competitive equilibrium, non-binding price controls (that is, price floors below and ceilings above the equilibrium) should not affect market outcomes, but in laboratory experiments they do. We build a simple dynamic model of double auction markets with zero-intelligence (ZI) computer traders...

Double auctions with profit-motivated human traders as well as quot;zero-intelligencequot; programmed traders have previously been shown to converge to Pareto optimal allocations in partial equilibrium settings. We show that these results remain robust in two-good general equilibrium settings...