This paper embeds security design in a model of evolutionary learning. We consider a competitive and perfect financial market where agents, as in Allen and Gale (1988), have heterogeneous valuations for cash flows. Our point of departure is that, instead of assuming that agents are endowed with...

We analyse a bargaining game in which one party, called the buyer, has the option of choosing the sequence of negotiations with other participants, called sellers. When the sequencing of negotiations is confidential and the sellers' goods are highly complementary, efficient, non-dissipative...

We examine corporate security choice by simulating an economy populated by adaptive agents who learn about the structure of security returns and prices through experience. Through a process of evolutionary selection, each agent gravitates toward strategies that generate the highest payoffs....

We analyze a distressed firm indebted to many creditors. The firm's owners have the option of choosing the sequence of restructuring negotiations with the creditors. We show that sequencing flexibility is beneficial to firm owners, and that the optimal sequencing of restructuring negotiations...

We examine auction design in a context where symmetrically informed adaptive agents with common valuations learn to bid for a good. Despite the absence of private valuations, asymmetric information, or risk aversion, bidder strategies do not converge to the Bertrand–Nash equilibrium strategies...

This article analyzes an economic experiment designed to measure the effect of “legal technology” on the economic efficiency of Coasian bargaining. In the experiment, the agreement of many agents (called “landowners”) to transfer their property rights to a single agent (called “the...