This is the only paper to provide a valuation framework for untraded Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) preferred stock. Up to $8.1 billion of bailout preferred stock, which is currently paying dividends, could be auctioned to investors. The first auction was held in March 2012. This paper...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to solve the optimal managerial compensation problem when shareholders are either naïvely optimistic or rational. Design/methodology/approach –The paper uses applied game theory to derive the optimal CEO compensation package with over optimistic...

The Term Securities Lending Facility (TSLF) lent $2.3 trillion worth of general collateral to 18 investment houses in exchange for riskier securities. Treasury collateral was in high demand in 2008 and 2009 as repo markets shunned lower quality collateral. This paper finds a negative and...

This paper tests whether poorly capitalized banks with troubled loan books are more likely to miss their bailout dividends. Privately held banks with weaker core capital ratios, more charged off loans, more allowances for loan losses, and more non-performing loans are more likely to miss their...

In some cases, the incentives of the manager will affect the behavior of the firm’s employees. A manager with low-powered incentives will discourage employees from engaging in destructive rent-seeking activities. Union members will need to cooperate with this poorly compensated manager if the...

Sometimes shareholders are better off delegating to a CEO with different objectives than their own. A top manager motivated to share surpluses with workers can encourage union members to adopt efficient production methods. Bond covenants may constrain managers from acquiescing to union wage...

Several papers have argued that firms can hide profits from unions with hard debt commitments. Alternatively, here we argue that unions can manipulate the non-shirking constraint and win higher efficiency wages. By creating a culture of mistrust and an opposition to supervision ex ante, unions...

Sometimes shareholders are better off delegating to a CEO with different objectives than their own. A top manager motivated to share surpluses with workers-a "soft" CEO-can encourage union members to adopt efficient production methods. Bond covenants may constrain managers from acquiescing to...

Empirical studies show that mutual funds are less likely to hold poorly governed foreign stocks. This theoretical model shows that foreign mutual fund managers will optimally lower their weight of badly governed stocks because they have higher costs of actively managing these holdings than their...

This paper considers a community where contracting institutions are weak. If social sanctions against opportunism rise in times of stress, then some good projects may be born out of misfortune.