We illustrate how a rational agent's motivation changes as one moves from RCTs to settings with discretionary choice. A distinguishing characteristic of discretion is due diligence: Before choosing treatment status, agents acquire information (signals). This alters motivation, with due diligence...

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...

We examine optimal provision of riskless government bonds under asymmetric information and safe asset scarcity. Paradoxically, corporations have incentives to issue junk debt precisely when intrinsic demand for safe debt is high since uninformed investors then migrate to risky overheated debt...

This paper shows that dominant firms may wish to encourage competition in vertically-related markets. It shows that firms' incentives to vertically integrate other firms depends on the competitive environment.

regarding leverage ratios and announcement effects, and can also explain observed violations of the pecking-order hypothesis.

This paper estimates costs of external finance, applying indirect inference to a dynamic structural model where the corporation endogenously chooses investment, distributions, lever ageand default. The corporation faces double taxation, costly state verification indebt markets, and...

We analyze callable, convertible, and callable-convertible bonds in a dynamic model with restructuring, taxation, and transaction/bankruptcy costs. In this setting, calling when conversion value equals call price is not generally optimal. Late (early) calls are optimal when the conversion ratio...

In the context of an infinitely-repeated principal-agent problem with hidden information, I examine the effect of long-term debt on implicit (relational) contracts between the firm and employees/suppliers. Implicit contracts rely on the promise of future surplus as an incentive for parties to...

In a static setting, Green (1984) shows that a warrant contract can eliminate the asset substitution problem created by debt. In contrast, we show that when the firm chooses volatility dynamically, no warrant can eliminate asset substitution, as equity is always risk-loving when the firm is near...

We develop a dynamic model of financial and investment policy with corporate and individual taxes, costly equity issuance, and debt constraints. The dynamic framework allows us to explain a number of empirical findings inconsistent with static tax-based theories. We show that: 1) there is no...