We model and experimentally examine the board structure-performance relationship. We examine single-tiered boards, two-tiered boards, insider-controlled boards and outsider-controlled boards. We find that even insider-controlled boards frequently adopt institutionally preferred rather than...

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 examine voting by a board designed to mitigate conflicts of interest between privately informed insiders and owners. Our model demonstrates that, as argued by researchers and the business press, boards with a majority of trustworthy but uninformed "watchdog" agents can implement...

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....

Our analysis explains how vulture investors (vultures) can maintain and exploit their rep- utations for toughness. Vultures leverage their reputations to extract concessions from stockholders in debt restructurings. To profit from these concessions, vultures must first acquire debt from...

We examine the effect of bargaining power and informational asymmetry on the design of international cooperative ventures in the presence of restrictions on equity participation and investment. When the bargaining advantage rests with the multinational, equity participation restrictions can...

In an asymmetric information framework, a number of authors have demonstrated the existence and uniqueness of short-term debt pooling equilibria in the absence of dissipative costs. We show that short-term debt pooling is robust to a broad range of deviations from stationarity and intertemporal...

We provide experimental evidence that nonbinding preplay communication between bidders in auctions of shares facilitates the adoption of equilibrium strategies: collusive strategies in uniform-price auctions, and the unique equilibrium in undominated strategies in discriminatory auctions. When...

We examine corporate issuance and payout policies in the presence of both adverse selection (in capital markets) and managerial opportunism. Our results establish the importance of the locus of decision control in the firm. When shareholders determine policies, debt financing is always optimal...

In this paper we investigate the effects of regulatory policies on troubled banks. In our analysis banks' portfolio decisions are unobservable and are made by management. Management's decisions are influenced by the compensation and intervention policies of shareholders and regulators as well as...