We analyze the dynamics of takeover contests where hostile raiders compete against white knights involved by a lead blockholder of the target firm (the incumbent). We assume that the incumbent has the power to bargain with the potential bidders to set a minimum takeover price. We characterize...

We study the effects of the reform of the system of severance payments (TFR) of Italian employees on the cost and the access to credit for small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs). The most direct consequence of the reform is to reduce in the long run the amount of liquid assets available to...

We introduce a form of pre-play communication that we call preopening. During the preopening, players announce their tentative actions to be played in the underlying game. Announcements are made using a posting system which is subject to stochastic failures. Posted actions are publicly...

We study games endowed with a pre-play phase in which players prepare the actions that will be implemented at a predetermined deadline. In the preparation phase, each player stochastically receives opportunities to revise her actions, and the finally-revised action is taken at the deadline. In...

This paper shows that there is a natural trade-off when designing market based executive compensation. The benefit of market based pay is that the stock price aggregates speculators’ dispersed information and there-fore takes a picture of managerial performance before the long-term value of a...

Two of the top economics journals have institutional ties to a specific university, the Quarterly Journal of Economics (QJE) to Harvard University and the Journal of Political Economy (JPE) to the University of Chicago. Researchers from Harvard, but also nearby Massachusetts Institute of...

Internet services are often free of charge but ask for customers' personal data in exchange for usage. We experimentally study whether the provision of information-based public goods is susceptible to restraint when contributions not only make contributors better off but also enable a...

A new line of theoretical and empirical literature emphasizes the pivotal role of fair institutions for growth. We present a model, a laboratory experiment, and a simple cross-country regression supporting this view. We model an economy with an unequal distribution of property rights, in which...

We report an experiment that uses the strategy method (Selten 1967) to elicit subjects' general strategy for playing any 2-person 3x3-game with integer payoffs between 0 and 99. Each two subjects' strategies play 500000 games in each of the 5 tournaments. For games with pure strategy equilibria...

Trust games are employed to investigate the effect of heterogeneity in income and race on cooperation in South Africa. The amount of socio-economic information available to the subjects about their counterparts is varied. No significant behavioural differences are observed, when no such...