We analyze a model where irrational and rational traders exchange a risky asset with competitive market makers. Irrational traders misperceive the mean of prior information (optimistic/pessimistic bias), the variance of prior information (better/lower than average effect)and the variance of the...

We characterize optimal IPO design in the distinct adverse selection problems: one affecting the IPO stage and one arising in the after-market. Allocating shares to an investor with superior information in the after-market depresses the share's value to less informed investors. However, because...

This paper, presents a game theoretic approach to the choice of the debt maturity by firms. The maturity of the debt can be viewed as a signal about the firm's quality sent to the financial sector. Two situations are investigated when the firm declares bankruptcy: the firm's assets may have zero...

This paper analyzes a multi-auction setting in which informed strategic agents are endowed with heterogeneous noisy signals about the liquidation value of a risky asset. One result is that when the variance of the noise is small the competition between traders takes the form of a rat race during...

The present work studies the behavior of a monopolistic informed trader in a two-period competitive dealer market. We show that the informed trader may engage in stock price manipulation as a result of the exploitation of his informational advantage (sufficient conditions are provided). The...

In this paper, we develop a model in which overconfident market participants and rational speculators trade against trend-chasers. We show that the growth and the burst of a financial bubble stem from positive feedback trading. However, the presence of overconfident traders and the risk aversion...

This paper analyzes a multi-auction setting in which informed strategic agents are endowed with heterogeneous noisy signals about the liquidation value of a risky asset. We solve for the unique linear equilibrium. One result is that when the variance of the noise is small which leads to a strong...

This paper analyzes the strategic competition between privately informed fast (FT) and slow traders (ST). In accordance with the overwhelming findings in the empirical literature, we find that the speed advantage of FTs has a beneficial effect on market liquidity as well as price efficiency. We...