According to prevailing theory, firms diversify in response to excess capacity of factors that are subject to market failure. By probing into the heterogeneity of these factors, we develop the corollary that firms that elect to diversify most widely should expect the lowest average rents. An...

Business Portfolio Planning techniques often suggest that firms should invest in industries with high profitability, high growth, or other attractive characteristics. Critiquing this view, we suggest that the same factors which lead to high profitability in an industry may cause its inefficient...

Using financial measures of performance we investigate the sources of value creation in the U.S. brewing industry between 1969 and 1979. We find that market share gains in this industry at this time are not correlated with changes in value and that the performance of individual leading firms is...

This paper documents the significant presence of diversified firms in the U.S. economy and presents three views on why firms diversify. The market power view argues that firms diversify to wield conglomerate power across markets. The agency view argues that diversification is undertaken by...

We ask how bargainers' incentives to communicate about more efficient widget designs depend on whether they negotiate price prior to, or after, fixing the traded design. We find three effects: (1) Since communication reveals information about preferences, bargainers with little power prefer to...

The paper is a study of barriers to communication in terms of agents' incentives to search for and communicate complementary information. In particular, I look at the value of commitment by comparing game forms in which a contract is negotiated prior to, versus after, search and communication. I...

The article proposes a research program to compare game forms in terms of their ability to govern ex post adjustments to ex ante contracts. The comparisons can be based on direct implementation-costs or the extent to which desirable adjustments are not implemented. In several examples of the...