The aim of this experiment is to test the role of institutional design in credit markets as a commitment device against renegotiation: when there is asymmetric information does a lower degree of centralization enhance efficiency? Does decentralization alleviate the adverse selection problem in...

The privately informed seller of a company sends a value message to the uninformed potential buyer who then proposes a price for the company. “Make-up” is measured by how much the true value is overstated, “Suspicion” by how much the price offer differs from the value message. Treatments...

We experimentally test overconfidence in investment decisions by offering participants the possibility to substitute their own for alternative investment choices. Overall, 149 subjects participated in two experiments, one with just one risky asset, the other with two risky assets. Overconfidence...

This paper analyzes vertical cross-shareholding, that is, the mutual holding of a minority of shares between vertically related firms. First, we explore the issue in a game-theoretic model and show that cross-shareholding is sufficient to obtain efficient outcomes. We then test the model's...