This article investigates the issue ofpredation by a regulated firm. Since it has private information, a regulated firm obtains higher rents in case of successful predation: the fewer the competitors, the higher the marginal social value of the regulated firm's effort and the higher the...

This article investigates the issue of predation by a regulated firm. Since it has private information, a regulated firm obtains higher rents in case of successful predation: the fewer the competitors, the higher the marginal social value of the regulated firm's effort and the higher the...

We analyse one frequent clause in bonds, covenant defeasance. Covenant defeasance allows the issuer to remove the bond's covenants by placing the remaining payments with a trustee in escrow to be paid out on schedule. We provide theoretical justification for this option and show empirically that...

We examine the effectiveness of the "Comply or Explain" approach to corporate governance in the UK. Using a unique database of 245 non-financial companies for the period of 1998-2004, we find an increasing trend of compliance with the Combined Code, but a frequent use of standard explanations in...

We analyze one frequently used clause in public bonds called covenant defeasance. Covenant defeasance allows the bond issuer to remove all of the bond's covenants by placing the remaining outstanding payments with a trustee in an escrow account to be paid out on schedule. Bond covenants are...

We propose a theory of supervision with endogenous transaction costs. A principal delegates part of his authority to a supervisor who can acquire soft information about an agent's productivity. If the supervisor were risk-neutral, the principal would simply make the better informed supervisor...

We propose a theory of supervision with endogenous transaction costs. A principal delegates part of his authority to a supervisor who can acquire soft information about an agent's productivity. If the supervisor were risk-neutral, the principal would simply make the better informed supervisor...

This article takes stock of the many contributions of Jean-Jacques Laffont to the theory of group incentives. We illustrate advances of the paradigm through examples drawn from the theory of public goods, the theory of hierarchies, and the theory of regulation.