We propose that an active takeover market provides incentives by offering acquisition opportunities to successful managers. This allows firms to reduce performance-based compensation and can rationalize loss-making acquisitions. At the same time, takeovers remain a substitute for board dismissal...

This short paper analyses the tension between "widening" and "deepening" of organizations such as the European Union. Members have the same consumption benefit of reform but weak and strong members differ in their cost of exerting reform efforts. As decisions are taken by unanimity, the reform...

This paper analyses takeovers of companies owned by atomistic shareholders and by one minority blockholder, all of whom can only decide to tender or retain their shares. As private benefit extraction is inefficient, the post-takeover share value increases with the bidder's shareholdings. In a...

In many bilateral transactions, the seller fears being underpaid because its outside option is better known to the buyer. We rationalize a variety of observed contracts as solutions to such smart buyer problems. The key to these solutions is to grant the seller upside participation. In contrast,...

We provide a theoretical model to explain the procyclicality of hedge fund activism. In our model, hedge funds which compete to retain investor flows excessively increase the net leverage of target firms in order to deliver high short-term payouts and signal their ability. Such excessive...