When information is costly, a seller may wish to prevent prospective buyers from acquiring information, for the cost of information acquisition is ultimately borne by the seller. A seller can achieve the desired prevention of information acquisition through posted-price selling, by offering...

This paper examines the impact of capital gains taxation on firms’ investment and financing decisions. We develop a real options model in which the timing of investment, the decision to default, and the firm’s capital structure are endogenouslyand jointly determined. Our analysis shows that...

In spite of the fact that they can draw on a larger, more liquid and more diversifiedpool of capital than the equity of reinsurance companies, financial markets have failed to displace reinsurance as the primary risk-sharing vehicle for natural catastrophe risk. We show that this failure can be...

This paper develops a real options framework to analyze the behavior of stock returns in mergers and acquisitions. In this framework, the timing and terms of takeovers are endogenous and result from value-maximizing decisions. The implications of the model for abnormal announcement returns are...

This paper analyzes the interaction between financial leverage and takeover activity. We develop a dynamic model of takeovers in which the financing strategies of bidding firms and the timing and terms of takeovers are jointly determined. In the paper, capital structure plays the role of a...

Over the period 2002 to 2003, Switzerland and the European Union (EU) were engaged in negotiations regarding banking secrecy. The EU's stated goal was for Switzerland to abolish banking secrecy. Switzerland refused and offered to impose a withholding tax on interest income instead. The two...

This paper presents a model of executive compensation in which the executive is risk averse and has specific knowledge - knowledge about the optimal actions to take that is costly to transfer to the principal. The model generates predictions that are consistent with the available evidence and...

This paper analyzes the relation between agency conflicts and risk management in a contingent claims model of the firm. In contrast to previous contributions, our analysis incorporates not only stockholder-debtholder conflicts but also managerstockholder conflicts. In particular we consider a...

In the standard real options approach to investment under uncertainty, agents formulate optimal policies under the assumptions of risk neutrality or perfect capital markets. However in most situations, corporate executives face incomplete markets either because they receive compensation packages...

In the standard real options approach to investment under uncertainty, agents formulate optimal policies under the assumptions of risk neutrality or perfect capital markets. Although the assumptions of risk neutrality or market completeness are crucial to the implications of the approach, they...