We model long-run firm performance, management compensation, and corporate governance in a dynamic, nonstationary world. We show that managerial compensation and governance policies, which, in a single-period context, can best be rationalized by self-serving managerial influence over board...

We show that introducing an external capital market with information asymmetry into a product market model reduces opportunistic substitution of sub-standard goods and encourages producers to concentrate on long-run reputation building. We test this result with a laboratory experiment. We find...

We model corporate governance in a world with competitive securities markets as well as markets for corporate assets. We show that varying the liquidity and opacity of corporate assets, the vitality of the market for corporate control, and the costs of enforcing shareholder rights to cash flows...

We model corporate governance in a world with competitive securities markets as well as markets for corporate assets. We show that varying the liquidity and opacity of corporate assets, the vitality of the market for corporate control, and the costs of enforcing shareholder rights to cash flows...

This paper investigates the relation between stock liquidity and firm performance. We find that firms with liquid stocks have better firm performance as measured by the market-to-book ratio. This result holds even when we include industry or firm fixed effects, control for idiosyncratic risk,...

This paper considers optimal compensation for a CEO who is entrusted with administering corporate assets honestly. Optimal compensation designs maximize integrity at minimum cost. These designs are very ‘low powered,’ i.e., while specifying a lower bound for performance and...

We posit that screening IPOs requires specialized labor which, in the short run, is in fixed supply. Hence, a sudden increase in demand for IPO financing increases the compensation of IPO screening labor. Increased compensation results in reduced screening which encourages sub-marginal firms to...

This paper develops and experimentally implements a simple multi-negotiation bargaining game, in which one agent, called the “developer,†must reach agreements with a series of other agents, called “landowners,†in order to implement a valueincreasing project. The game has a...

In this paper we model the value of a firm based on its current earnings and cash balances. The value is modelled on the assumption that earnings follow a mean-reverting process. The effect of advertising on earnings is modelled, and the condition for optimal advertising derived. The value of...

Functional Signal plus Noise (FSN) time series models are introduced for the econometric analysis of the dynamics of a large cross-section of prices in which contemporaneous observations are functionally related. A semiparametric FSN model is developed in which a smooth, cubic spline signal...