presidential address collateral and commitment optimal dynamic capital structure choice is fundamentally a problem of commitment in a standard trade off setting with shareholder debtholder agency conflicts full commitment counterfactually predicts the firm would rely almost exclusively on debt financing conversely absent commitment a modigliani miller like value irrelevance and policy indeterminacy result holds thus the content of dynamic trade off theory must depend on the commitment technology in this context collateral is valuable as a low cost commitment device because ex ante optimal commitments are likely to be suboptimal ex post observed capital structure dynamics will exhibit hysteresis and depart significantly from standard predictions

pareto improving minimum wage laws by increasing the expected wage in low skill jobs a minimum wage law can reduce the incentive for low skill workers to imitate high skill workers in the signalling process the gain from reduced investment in the signal can more than offset the loss from unemployment among low skill workers so that total output increases moreover with an appropriate poll tax on workers to compensate owners of capital the law can make all workers and owners of capital better off

productivity change using growth accounting and frontier based approaches evidence from a monte carlo analysis this study presents some quantitative evidence from a number of simulation experiments on the accuracy of the productivitygrowth estimates derived from growthaccounting ga and frontier based methods namely data envelopment analysis corrected ordinary least squares and stochastic frontier analysis based malmquist indices under various conditions these include the presence of technical inefficiency measurement error misspecification of the production function for the ga and parametric approaches and increased input and price volatility from one period to the next the study finds that the frontier based methods usually outperform ga but the overall performance varies by experiment parametric approaches generally perform best when there is no functional form misspecification but their accuracy greatly diminishes otherwise the results also show that the deterministic approaches perform adequately even under conditions of modest measurement error and when measurement error becomes larger the accuracy of all approaches including stochastic approaches deteriorates rapidly to the point that their estimates could be considered unreliable for policy purposes

ownership dynamics and asset pricing with a large shareholder we analyze the optimal trading and ownership policy of a large shareholder who must trade off diversification and monitoring incentives without commitment the problem is similar to durable goods monopoly the share price today depends on expected future trades we show that the large shareholder ultimately trades to the competitive price taking allocation even though it entails inefficient monitoring with continuous trading the large shareholder trades immediately to this allocation if moral hazard is weak enough that her private valuation of a share is decreasing in her stake otherwise the large shareholder adjusts her stake gradually we consider implications for asset pricing ipo underpricing and lockup provisions

the role of lockups in initial public offerings in a sample of 2 794 initial public offerings ipos we test three potential explanations for the existence of ipo lockups lockups serve as i a signal of firm quality ii a commitment device to alleviate moral hazard problems or iii a mechanism for underwriters to extract additional compensation from the issuing firm our results support the commitment hypothesis insiders of firms that are associated with greater potential for moral hazard lockup their shares for a longer period of time insiders of firms that have experienced larger excess returns are backed by venture capitalists or go public with high quality underwriters are more likely to be released from the lockup restrictions an initial public offering ipo often represents the first opportunity that a firm s founders and initial investors have to begin the process of realizing the value for their ownership stake in the firm 1 we explore one particular aspect that regulates this cashing out by insiders namely the structure of the price reaction to and the compliance with investment banker lockups which restrict the ability of the firm s management and prepublic investors from selling their stock in the aftermarket for a period of time after the ipo our article provides three contributions on going public and financial markets first we explore why prepublic insiders agree to long holding periods after the ipo we test three potential explanations i lockups as a signal of quality ii as a commitment device to alleviate moral hazard problems and iii as a means for investment banks to extract additional compensation from issuing firms our analysis supports the commitment hypothesis specifically investment banks impose longer lockups when the moral hazard in the aftermarket is higher we conduct several tests of the signaling hypothesis and find no support for the idea that insiders signal their quality by locking

foundations of dynamic monopoly and the coase conjecture subgame perfect equilibria are characterized for a market in which the seller quotes a price each period assume zero costs positive interest rate continuum of buyers and some technical conditions if buyers valuations are positive then equilibrium is unique buyers strategies are stationary and the price sequence is determinant along the equilibrium path but possibly randomized elsewhere otherwise a continuum of stationary equilibria can exist but at most one with analytic strategies coase s conjecture is verified for stationary strategies reducing the period length drives all prices to zero or the least valuation connections to bargaining models are described journal qf economic literature classification

bargaining with arrival of new traders we study dynamic bargaining with asymmetric information and arrival of exogenous events which represent arrival of traders or information we char acterize the unique limit of stationary equilibria with frequent offers the possi bility of arrivals changes equilibrium dynamics there is delay in equilibrium and the seller slowly screens out buyers with higher valuations the seller pay off equals what he can achieve by simply awaiting an arrival in applications when buyer valuations fall average prices drop and delay increases surplus division depends on relative arrival rates of buyers sellers and expected time to trade is a nonmonotonic function of the arrival rate

the effects of moral hazard on asset prices when financial markets are complete abstract this paper discusses the implications for prices and quantities of an alternative trading arrangement in kahn s 1990 economic environment with moral hazard unlike kahn s model of asset trade my model does not impose any unmotivated restrictions on short sales instead it features complete markets and publicly observable asset transactions like kahn s model my model implies that allocations are constrained pareto optimal however the implications of my model for asset prices are considerably different in particular when all agents have log utility asset prices satisfy an aggregation theorem also unlike kahn s model the model in this paper does worse than the standard representative agent model in terms of explaining the equity premium

reputation in bargaining and durable goods monopoly this paper analyzes durable goods monopoly in an infinite horizon discrete time game we prove that as the time interval between successive offers approaches zero all seller payoffs between zero and static monopoly profits are supported by subgame perfect equilibria this reverses a well known conjecture of coase alternatively one can interpret the model as a sequential bargaining game with one sided incomplete information in which an uninformed seller makes all the offers our folk theorem for seller payoffs equally applies to the set of sequential equilibria of this bargaining game

why higher takeover premia protect minority shareholders posttakeover moral hazard by the acquirer and free riding by the target shareholders lead the former to acquire as few sharcs as necessary to gain control as moral hazard is most severe under such low ownership concentration inefficiencies arise in successful takeovers moreover share supply is shown to be upward sloping rules promoting ownership concentration limit both agency costs and the occurrence of takeovers furthermore higher takeover premia induced by competition translate into higher ownership concen tration and are thus beneficial finally one share one vote and simple majority are generally not optimal and socially optimal rules need not emerge through private contracting

asset markets with insider trading disclosure rule and reselling constraint an experimental analysis abstract we investigate the impact of compulsory insider trading disclosure and its combination with a mandatory holding rule on price predictability and asset mispricing we modify the dynamic price adjustment model to account for insiders private information our results show that insiders produce weakly characterized price signals that induce a less than proportional price adjustment to the changes in the dividend value in both markets with disclosure rule and holding requirement in comparison with unregulated markets a shift in insiders strategies from information motivated to liquidity motivated trading appears to fuel the impairment of price predictability in regulated markets the exacerbation of asset mispricing in markets with holding restriction is characterized by a growth in the speculative transactions and loss making trading proposals

optimal portfolio liquidation with distress risk we analyze the problem of an investor who needs to unwind a portfolio in the face of recurring and uncertain liquidity needs with a model that accounts for both permanent and temporary price impact of trading we first show that a risk neutral investor who myopically deleverages his position to meet an immediate need for cash always prefers to sell more liquid assets if the investor faces the possibility of a downstream shock however the solution differs in several important ways if the ensuing shock is sufficiently large the nonmyopic investor unwinds positions more than immediately necessary and all else being equal prefers to retain more of the assets with low temporary price impact in order to hedge against possible distress more generally optimal liquidation involves selling strictly more of the assets with a lower ratio of permanent to temporary impact even if these assets are relatively illiquid the results suggest that properly accounting for the possibility of future shocks should play a role in managing large portfolios

information sales and insider trading with long lived information fundamental information resembles in many respects a durable good hence the eects of its incorporation into stock prices depend on who is the agent controlling its flow similarly to a durable goods monopolist a monopolistic analyst selling information intertemporally competes against herself this forces her to partially relinquish control over the information flow to traders conversely an insider solves the intertemporal competition problem through vertical integration thus exerting a tighter control over the flow of information comparing market patterns i show that a dynamic market where information is provided by an analyst is thicker and more informative than one where an insider trades

ipo mechanisms monitoring and ownership structure1 this paper analyzes the e ect of di erent ipo mechanisms on the structure of share ownership and explores the role of underpricing and rationing in determining investors shareholdings we focus on the agency problem that results when large institutions are the only investors capable of monitoring the firm whereas small shareholders free ride on these activities the major conclusion is that some well known aspects of ipos may be explained as rational responses by the issuer to the existence of regulatory constraints in public capital markets there is a two stage o ering mechanism in which the investment banker acting in the interests of the issuer optimally rations the allotment of shares to small investors in order to capture the benefits associated with better monitoring by institutions importantly in our model the existence of underpricing and oversubscription is an indication that the issuer has received a higher ex ante price than would have been obtained through a competitive walrasian type o ering process 1998 elsevier science s a all rights reserved jel classification g24 g32 g38

owner managers and firm performance during the asian and global financial crises evidence from korea abstractwe examine the performance of the korean owner managers during the 1997 1998 asian financial crisis and the 2008 2009 global financial crisis to establish whether they overcome the unexpected exterior shocks better than employed managers we find that the owner managers record a significantly greater performance during the crises and especially during the latter period moreover our results suggest that such a tendency comes from the owner managers superior investment decisions our paper thus highlights the role of owner managers by studying their performance during the korean economic crisis periods jel g01 g32 g34

ownership concentration corporate control activity and firm value evidence from the death of inside blockholders we analyze how ownership concentration affects firm value and control of public companies by examining effects of deaths of inside blockholders we find shareholder wealth increases ownership concentration falls and extensive corporate control activity ensues share price responses are related to the deceased s equity stake control group holdings fall for two thirds of the firms due to either the estate s dispersal or inheritors selling stock a majority of firms become targets of control bids three quarters of bids are successful one third are hostile our evidence is broadly consistent with stulz s 1988 model of the relationship between ownership concentration and firm value the objective of this paper is to assess how changes in insider ownership concentration affect firm value corporate governance and the control of public companies we obtain our evidence on these issues by examining the effects of the death of an inside blockholder that is a member of the firm s control group as defined by securities and exchange commission sec disclosure rules who holds 5 percent or more of a firm s equity overall we find that the death of an inside blockholder an exogenous event is value enhancing reduces ownership concentration and leads to extensive corporate control activity our analysis has three components one we use market based evidence to evaluate how changes in ownership concentration affect firm value by analyzing the share price response to the death of an inside blockholder financial market efficiency implies that share prices capitalize gains or losses from changes in ownership concentration and future control events expected to ensue from an inside blockholder s death thus such valuation effects provide a test of the continuing controversy as to whether ownership concentration promotes managerial entrenchment or aligns insider and noninsider interests we find that the share price response to the death of an inside blockholder is significantly positive when the level of ownership concentra

strategic trading in a dynamic noisy market this paper studies a dynamic model of a nancial market with a strategic trader in each period the strategic trader receives a privately observed endowment in the stock he trades with competitive market makers to share risk noise traders are present in the market after receiving a stock endowment the strategic trader is shown to reduce his risk exposure either by selling at a decreasing rate over time or by selling and then buying back some of the shares sold when the time between trades is small the strategic trader reveals the information regarding his endowment very quickly

an analysis of the stock price reaction to sudden executive deaths implications for the managerial labor market abstract certain characteristics of managerial employment arrangements and of the managerial labor market make shareholder wealth dependent on an executive s continued employment these wealth effects are investigated by examining the common stock price reaction to unexpected deaths of senior corporate executives abnormal stock price changes are documented for a sample of fifty three events these abnormal stock price changes are associated with the executive s status as a corporate founder and with measures of the executive s talents and decision making responsibility and of the transaction costs associated with renegotiating or terminating the employment agreement

large traders and illiquid options hedging vs manipulation abstract in this article we study the effects on derivative pricing arising from price impacts by large traders when a large trader issues a derivative and partially hedges his risk by trading in the underlying he influences both his hedge portfolio and the derivative s payoff in a black scholes model with a price impact on the drift we analyze the resulting trade off by explicitly solving the utility maximization problem of a large investor endowed with an illiquid contingent claim we find several interesting phenomena which cannot occur in frictionless markets first the indifference price is a convex function of the contingent claim and not concave as in frictionless markets implying that for any claim the buyer s indifference price is larger than the seller s indifference price second the seller s indifference prices of large positions in derivatives are smaller than the black scholes replication costs therefore a large trader might have an incentive to issue options if they are traded at black scholes prices furthermore he hedges option positions only partly if he has a negative price impact and thus exploits his ability to manipulate the option s payoff for a positive price impact he overhedges the option position leading to an extra profit from the stock position exceeding a perfect hedge finally we also study a model where the large shareholder has a price impact on both drift and volatility

aggregation and linearity in the provision of intertemporal incentives we consider the problem of providing incentives over time for an agent with constant absolute risk aversion the optimal compensation scheme is found to be a linear function of a vector of n accounts which count the number of times that each of the n kinds of observable events occurs the number n is independent of the number of time periods so the accounts may entail substantial aggregation in a continuous time version of the problem the agent controls the drift rate of a vector of accounts that is subject to frequent small random fluctuations the solution is as if the problem were the static one in which the agent controls only the mean of a multivariate normal distribution and the principal is constrained to use a linear compensation rule if the principal can observe only coarser linear aggregates such as revenues costs or profits the optimal compensation scheme is then a linear function of those aggregates the combination of exponential utility normal distributions and linear compensation schemes makes computations and comparative statics easy to do as we illustrate we interpret our linearity results as deriving in part from the richness of the agent s strategy space which makes it possible for the agent to undermine and exploit complicated nonlinear functions of the accounting aggregates

optimal consumption choices for a large investor abstract this paper examines the optimal consumption and investment problem for a large investor whose portfolio choices affect the instantaneous expected returns on the traded assets alternatively our analysis can be interpreted in terms of an optimal growth problem with nonlinear technologies existence of optimal policies is established using martingale and duality techniques under general assumptions on the securities price process and the investor s preferences as an illustration of our characterization result explicit solutions are provided for specific examples involving an agent with logarithmic utilities and a generalized two factor version of the ccapm is derived the analogy of the consumption problem examined in this paper to the consumption problem with constraints on the portfolio choices is emphasized

large shareholders monitoring and ownership dynamics toward pure managerial firms abstract we study ownership dynamics when the manager and the large shareholder both risk neutral simultaneously choose effort and monitoring level respectively to serve their non congruent interests we show that there is a wedge between the valuation of shares by atomistic shareholders and the large shareholder s valuation at the markov perfect equilibrium the large shareholder divests her shares if the incongruence of their interests is mild divestment is drastic all her shares are sold immediately if their interests diverge sharply the divestment is gradual in order to prevent a sharp fall in share price in the limit the firm becomes purely managerial