This article focuses on how the choice of discount rate can dramatically affect policy choices. These policies include whether to build a bridge, whether to privatize a Power Marketing Administration which sells electricity generated by government-owned facilities such as dams, how much money...

Much of the modern research on firm boundaries, following Ronald Coase (1937), assumes that firms are run by owner-managers. This contrasts with the agency literature, following Adolph Berle and Gardiner Means (1932), that emphasizes the problems that arise when managers are not owners. In this...

Within an optimal contracting framework, we analyze the optimal number of creditors a company borrows from. We also analyze the optimal allocation of security interests among creditors and intercreditor voting rules that govern renegotiation of debt contracts. The key to our analysis is the idea...

Radio spectrum is a scarce resource; understanding its economic value is one piece of information needed to manage it efficiently. Estimating the value of radio spectrum, however, creates significant challenges not found in valuing some other assets. Spectrum is somewhat of a special case; market...