We examine corporate disclosure activity around seasoned equity offerings and its effect on stock prices. If a firm's disclosures can increase the proceeds from security issuance, either by reducing information asymmetry or by "hyping" the stock, it will enjoy a lower cost of equity capital at...

Knowledge consists of the triad: information, interpretation, and judgment. Much of modern political economy has miscarried by proceeding as though knowledge were merely information - that is, as though interpretation were symmetric and final. Economic prosperity depends greatly on new knowledge...

Using the standard non linear income and commodity taxation framework, we examine the optimal policy to be adopted when the same labour disutility can receive two opposite interpretations: taste for leisure and activity limitation. In the absence of complete information about individual...

Dispute-settlement panels of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), as well as the GATT Secretariat, have condemned the use of trade restrictions by some countries to induce other countries to protect the global environment. The GATT Secretariat has recommended that countries rely on...

In the United States, there is evidence that domestic non-filing firms do not always support dumping investigations. Absent other factors, domestic firms have an unambiguous incentive to support petitions filed by other domestic producers. We argue that in cases where the non-complainant firm is...

Randomized experiments (REs) are viewed as the "gold standard" for the treatment evaluation, but many REs are plagued by attrition or non-compliance, even among subjects receiving the more effective treatment. This paper constructs an economic model of decision-making in which individuals make...

Tax treaties are often viewed as a mechanism for eliminating tax competition, however this approach ignores the need for bargaining over the treaty's terms. This paper focuses on how bargaining can affect the withholding taxes set under the treaty. In a simple framework, we develop hypotheses...

This paper provides a more general model of the determination of rent-seeking costs by combining the following features: endogenous rent determination, asymmetric effectiveness of contending agents in their lobbying efforts, and multiple periods. In doing so, the paper generalizes some aspects...

With the emergence of North-South intra-industry trade in products where consumers value quality, exporting countries potentially face significant barriers to entry. Due to the existence of asymmetric information about new products in a foreign market, the producer's reputation becomes an...

Auction theory has emphasized the importance of private information to the profits of bidders. However, the theory has failed to consider the question of whether or not bidders will be able to keep their information private. We show that in a variety of contexts bidders will reveal all their...