We investigate the transition from private to public ownership of companies that had previously been subject to leveraged buyouts. As they go to the public markets for equity, such firms face an information asymmetry problem. Behavioral effects are also likely to be at work. We show that the...

In 1997, France T‚l‚com, the state-owned French telephone company, went through a partial privatization. The government offered current and prior France T‚l‚com employees the opportunity to buy portfolios of shares with various combinations of discounts, required holding periods,...

Generic drug utilization has risen dramatically, from 19% of scrips in 1984 to 47% in 2001, thus bringing significant direct dollar savings. Generic drug use may also yield indirect savings if it lowers the average price of those brand-name drugs that are still purchased. Prior work indicates -...

We examine the investment decision problem of a group whose members have heterogeneous time preferences. In particular, they have different discount factors for utility, possibly not exponential. We characterize the properties of efficient allocations of resources and of shadow prices that would...

Donald Trump's election and his nomination of Scott Pruitt, a climate skeptic, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency drastically downshifted expectations on US climate-change policy. We study firms' stock-price reactions and institutional investors' portfolio adjustments after these...

The initial hope for climate science was that an improved understanding of what the future might bring would lead to appropriate public policies and effective international climate agreements. Even if that hope is not realized, as now seems likely, scientific advances leading to a more refined...

One in twelve Americans suffers from asthma and its annual costs are estimated to exceed $50 billion. Simultaneously, the root causes of the disease remain unknown. A recent hypothesis speculates that maternal vitamin D levels during pregnancy affect the probability the fetus later develops...

For several decades now a debate has raged about policy-making by litigation. Spurred by the way in which tobacco, environmental, and other litigation has functioned as an alternative form of regulation, the debate asks whether policy-making or regulation by litigation is more or less socially...

The behavioral revolution in economics has demonstrated that human beings often have difficulty making wise choices. The most widely chronicled difficulties arise for decisions made under conditions of uncertainty, those whose consequences unfold over significant amounts of time, and decisions...

Over 250 respondents--graduate students in law and public policy--assessed the risks of climate change and valued climate-change mitigation policies. Many aspects of their behavior were consistent with rational behavior. For example, respondents successfully estimated distributions of...