A subgame perfect Nash equilibrium is characterized for an industry with dissipative costs of agency. In sequence, firms can enter the industry, raise capital with external debt and/or equity, invest in a capital-intensive technology or dissipate capital in perquisites, and finally produce output. For plausible values of two critical parameters, some firms forego in equilibrium investments with positive net present values. Although more managers would like their firms to invest in the capital-intensive technology, they cannot raise the required cash in the capital market. In equilibrium, the industry can have both a profitable core of large, secure, capital-intensive firms, with some debt but no unique optimal capital structure, and a competitive fringe of small, risky, labor-intensive firms. Even as the cost of entry converges to zero, capital-intensive firms can earn extraordinary profits, while all labor-intensive firms fail. With costly agency, access to capital can become a barrier to entry.

[Markets for many real assets are characterized by sequential search followed by bilateral bargaining between matched buyers and sellers. For a category of real assets, the joint, intertemporal valuation problems of buyers, owners, and sellers, and the associated Nash pricing function are solved explicitly. In equilibrium, the average transaction price is a noisy, proportional random walk, and the liquidity premium is positive for matched owners. Depending on the values of the parameters, the liquidity premium can be substantial. In a related problem of optimal development with costly search, the optimal exercise point, cost of development, and value of the undeveloped asset are calculated analytically. With search, development can occur sooner and undeveloped assets have lower market values than the standard solution without search.]

In aggregate, options on real and financial assets can have very different properties. Typically, the good or service produced by a real asset has a finite elasticity of demand and developers have finite capacities. Also, the supply of options can be limited, and developers can be less than perfectly competitive. In a subgame, perfect Nash equilibrium with these properties, the optimal exercise policy, and resulting values of developed and undeveloped assets are calculated explicitly. The novel comparative statics are discussed in details To date, options on real assets, like real estate, natural resources, and capital assets, have been analyzed only in partial equilibrium. 1 When viewed from the perspective of a single developer with a single undeveloped asset, real options have many characteristics in common with financial options. With real estate and other real assets, the option is an undeveloped property, the underlying asset is a developed property, the exercise price is the cost of development, and the maturity is generally infinite. In previous articles special characteristics of real options have been emphasized. These include the time to build, the often sto-I am grateful to Chester Spatt for suggesting this problem and to Chester

I examine a two-period noisy rational expectations model of a futures market and show that the dispersion of expectations about a weighted average of future prices measures both the additional volatility and the additional expected.volume of trade associated with noisy information. The role played by dispersion helps clarify several stylized facts concerning volume and price behavior. Specifically, dispersion can be a factor contributing to the positive correlation between volume and absolute price changes, and the positive correlation between consecutive absolute price changes. Article published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Financial Studies in its journal, The Review of Financial Studies.

[In aggregate, options on real and financial assets can have very different properties. Typically, the good or service produced by a real asset has a finite elasticity of demand, and developers have finite capacities. Also, the supply of options can be limited, and developers can be less than perfectly competitive. In a subgame, perfect Nash equilibrium with these properties, the optimal exercise policy, and resulting values of developed and undeveloped assets are calculated explicitly. The novel comparative statics are discussed in detail.]

[I examine a two-period noisy rational expectations model of a futures market and show that the dispersion of expectations about a weighted average of future prices measures both the additional volatility and the additional expected volume of trade associated with noisy information. The role played by dispersion helps clarify several stylized facts concerning volume and price behavior. Specifically, dispersion can be a factor contributing to the positive correlation between volume and absolute price changes, and the positive correlation between consecutive absolute price changes.]

[When a firm is in financial distress, in most cases a set of mutually advantageous reorganization plans exist. This article shows that the bankruptcy code, by providing rules governing the negotiation process, yields a unique solution to the reorganization process. In addition, the structure imposed by the code mitigates the holdout problem created by the individual claimant's divergent incentives.]

When a firm is in financial distress, in most cases a set of mutually advantageous reorganization plans exist. This article shows that the bankruptcy code, by providing rules governing the negotiation process, yields a unique solution to the reorganization process. In addition, the structure imposed by the code mitigates the holdout problem created by the individual claimant's divergent incentives.

Agricultural and Food Policy, Research Methods/Statistical Methods

[If two linear models have different sets of explanatory variables and the same variable to be explained, the residual variance of the correct model (S extasciicircum2"n) has a smaller mean value than that of the incorrect one (t extasciicircum2"n). This note shows under fairly general conditions that S extasciicircum2"n extless t extasciicircum2"n will hold with probability arbitrarily close to 1 provided that the sample size n is large enough.]