In this paper, an informational asymmetry exists between investors and the issuer of an initial public offering about the value of the security. To avoid market failure, a solution is proposed in which the issuer makes a disclosure about firm value that is verified by an investment banker. The investment banker enters into a contingent contract with investors which imposes a penalty if the ex post observable cash flow indicates fraudulent disclosure. A bivariate signalling model is formulated and solved, and testable implications are derived from comparative statics analysis.

Contract and search theories are integrated to provide a consistent explanation of contract formation, the intertemporal structure of labor markets, the absence of ex post market clearing, and thus of unemployment in a contractual setting. Self-fulfilling equilibria are described in which low-productivity firms lay off some workers, while high-productivity firms' recruitment (search) intensity and the resulting degree of interfirm mobility are endogenous. The effects of severance pay on layoffs and mobility are identified. Finally, the market economy is shown to generate too few layoffs whenever high-productivity firms recruit new hires: without recruitment, laidoff workers are immobile, and equilibrium is constrained efficient.

Earnings announcements, Market reaction, Informational content, Market reaction duration

This paper develops the instrumental variables estimator for a possibly incomplete, dynamic economic system with vector autoregressive moving average disturbances. Its asymptotic distribution is derived and, under fairly weak conditions, it is shown that lagged endogenous variables may be validly included in the set of instruments. Statistics are proposed for testing the order of the error process and the validity of the instruments.

"This paper uses combinations of full brothers, half brothers, and fathers and sons to measure the effect of common family background on a household's income and wealth. While the data are drawn from a nineteenth-century [U.S.] population, the intraclass correlation for income ranges from .13 to .18, which is similar to that found in modern samples. Intraclass correlations for wealth are significantly higher (.18-.35) than are those for income. Intraclass correlations of half brothers compared to those for full brothers suggest that fathers play a dominant role in the transmission of the common family effect. When unobserved background is decomposed into individual and family effects, the individual effect dominates the family effect for income, while the family effect dominates the individual effect for wealth." A comment by Sherwin Rosen is included (pp. 80-2).