Equity capital allocation plays a particularly important role for financial institutions such as banks, who issue equity infrequently but have continuous access to debt capital. In such a context this paper shows that EVA and RAROC based capital budgeting mechanisms have economic foundations. We...

Given recent public attention paid to high-flying internet IPOs such as Yahoo and Amazon.com, this paper explores a product market motive for going public. We develop a model where consumers look to the stock price to make inferences. The model predicts that only better quality firms will go...

Intermediaries such as financial advisers serve as an interface between portfolio managers and investors. A large fraction of their compensation is often provided through kickbacks from the portfolio manager. We provide an explanation for the widespread use of intermediaries and kickbacks....

Compensation policy has become one of the most important ingredients of corporate governance. In this paper we take a new look at the issue, by contrasting the use of options with that of stock. We do this by integrating the repricing or resetting aspect of options with that of industrial...

Compensation policy has become one of the most important ingredients of corporate governance. In this paper we take a new look at the issue, by contrasting the use of options with that of stock. We do this by integrating the repricing or resetting aspect of options with that of industrial...

This paper takes a novel approach to estimating bankruptcy costs by inference from market prices of equity and put options using a dynamic structural model of capital structure. This approach avoids the selection bias of looking at firms in or near default and therefore permits theories of ex...