Public investment represents a non-negligible fraction of total public expenditures. Yet, theoretical studies of the effects of public spending when the economy is stuck in a liquidity trap invariably assume that government expenditures are entirely wasteful. In this paper, we consider a...

We present a novel theory to explain the puzzling issue regarding why certain firms in financial distress, that must renegotiate their debt prefer a formal bankruptcy procedure, which is more costly, over direct negotiations with their debtholders. Specifically, we show that claimholders’...

Given equity’s convex payoff function, shareholders can transfer wealth from bondholders by increasing firm risk. We test the existing hypothesis that convertible debt reduces this classical agency problem of risk-shifting. First, we derive a measure of shareholders’ risk incentives induced...

We introduce learning in a dynamic game of international pollution, with ecological uncertainty. We characterize and compare the feedback non-cooperative emissions strategies of players when the players do not know the distribution of ecological uncertainty but they gain information (learn)...

Exogenous shocks to farmers’ consumption, production and labour market decisions are rarely considered accurately. For farm households, under labour market imperfections, such decisions are often interlinked. This calls for non-separable agricultural household models. According to this...

We embed learning (without experimentation) in optimal growth. We extend the Mirman-Zilcha results of stochastic optimal growth to the learning case. We use recursive methods to study the effect of learning on the dynamic program by considering the case of iso-elastic utility and linear...

We study the effect of dynamic and investment externalities in a one-sector growth model. In our model, two agents interact strategically in the utilization of capital for consumption, savings, and investment in technical progress. We consider two types of investment choices: complements and...

We study the effect of changing income on optimal decisions in the multidimensional expected utility framework with strongly separable preferences. Using the Kihlstrom and Mirman (1974) (KM) utility representation, we show that the effect of changing income can be decomposed into a modified...

We consider decision-makers facing a risky wealth prospect. The probability distribution depends on pecuniary effort, e.g., the amount invested in a venture or prevention expenditures to protect against accidental losses. We provide necessary local conditions and sufficient global conditions for...

Puzzling associations between low levels of ownership concentration and CEO pay practices such as pay-for-luck, a low pay-performance sensitivity, a more asymmetric pay-performance relation, and high salaries, have been documented. They have been interpreted as evidence that CEO pay is not set...