ABSTRACT Does valuation affect mergers? Data suggest that periods of stock merger activity are correlated with high market valuations. The naïve explanation that overvalued bidders wish to use stock is incomplete because targets should not be eager to accept stock. However, we show that potential market value deviations from fundamental values on both sides of the transaction can rationally lead to a correlation between stock merger activity and market valuation. Merger waves and waves of cash and stock purchases can be rationally driven by periods of over‐ and undervaluation of the stock market. Thus, valuation fundamentally impacts mergers.

ABSTRACT We propose a theory of coordination and influence among blockholders. Privately informed activists time their trades in sequence to lower acquisition costs, prompting a strategic use of order flows: leader activists create trading gains for their followers, ultimately influencing their willingness to bear greater value‐enhancing intervention costs. Through this channel, informed trades can exhibit predictability, in sharp contrast with Kyle (1985, Econometrica 53, 1315–1335). We explain how this novel predictability shapes free‐rider problems affecting governance, and how it produces price abnormalities analogous to those documented empirically. We also uncover how private information interdependence can be a key catalyst for the mechanism studied.

ABSTRACT We describe how episodic illiquidity arises from a breakdown in cooperation between market participants. We first solve a one‐period trading game in continuous‐time, using an asset pricing equation that accounts for the price impact of trading. Then, in a multi‐period framework, we describe an equilibrium in which traders cooperate most of the time through repeated interaction, providing apparent liquidity to one another. Cooperation breaks down when the stakes are high, leading to predatory trading and episodic illiquidity. Equilibrium strategies that involve cooperation across markets lead to less frequent episodic illiquidity, but cause contagion when cooperation breaks down.