This article investigates the claim that debt finance can increase firm value by curtailing managers' access to 'free cash flow.' The author first shows that incentive contracts that tie the managers' pay to stockholder wealth are often a superior solution to the free cash flow problem. He then considers the possibility that the manager can trade on secondary capital markets. Liquid secondary markets are shown to undermine management incentive schemes and, in many cases, to restore the value of debt finance in controlling the free cash flow problem.

The paper examines the evolutionary foundations of bilateral bargaining behavior. Interaction is assumed to be personal, in the sense that agents may recognize each others' bargaining strategies. In particular, the model allows interaction between “obstinate” agents, whose demands are independent of the opponent, and “sophisticated” agents, who adapt to their opponent's expected play. When the pie's size is certain, evolution favors obstinate agents who insist on getting at least half the pie. The unique outcome is an equal split. In sufficiently noisy environments, sophisticated behavior appears in equilibrium together with greedy obstinate behavior. There is then a positive probability of conflict.

The last two decades have witnessed a tremendous growth in the volume of assets and liabilities whose cash flows depend, in a variety of ways, on the path of interest rates. Some of these, including floating-rate notes and swap agreements, contractually base cash flows on current and past interest rates and contain caps, floors, and other, more complex features. Others, including mortgages, many corporate bonds, and time deposits, are fixed-rate instruments that contain embedded options, such as those to prepay, call, or withdrawal. The irregular exercise of these options causes cash flows to vary as time proceeds and interest rates rise or fall. This paper develops a state-contingent claims technique for valuing such securities. It is derived from the option-based model of Breeden and Litzenberger (1978) using the transition matrix approach of Banz and Miller (1978). Particular attention is paid to valuing so-called path-dependent securities whose contemporaneous cash flows depend on the historical path of interest rates as well as their current level. A detailed example is provided in which an adjustable-rate mortgage is valued under a variety of economic and security specific assumptions.

Prior theoretical work predicts an underprovision of advance-notice contracts stemming from their enforcement costs. In the present model, it is rather the fundamental inability of workers to alienate their right to quit taken in conjunction with parameters central to job separation decisions that jointly determine the mix of notice and no-notice contracts observed in equilibrium. Not all equilibrium contracts are efficient, but there is no underprovision of notice. Mandating notice cannot improve on joint value and indeed may reduce it. Furthermore, although a mandate can be merely redistributive, there are cases in which it harms all parties.

A model of the equity takeover premium is developed that demonstrates a direct link between the percentage premium paid to target shareholders and the target firm's capital structure and asset structure. We test the model using a sample of 145 cash tender offers and find that target abnormal returns increase with the target's liability to equity ratio and decrease with the target's financial asset to equity ratio. The addition of these variables dramatically improves the explanatory power of regressions explaining percentage takeover premiums paid to target shareholders.

This paper develops a computable general equilibrium model in which endogenous agency costs can potentially alter business-cycle dynamics. A principal conclusion is that the agency-cost model replicates the empirical fact that output growth displays positive autocorrelation at short horizons. This hump-shaped output behavior arises because households delay their investment decisions until agency costs are at their lowest--a point in time several periods after the initial shock.

This paper develops a computable general equilibrium model in which endogenous agency costs can potentially alter business-cycle dynamics. A principal conclusion is that the agency-cost model replicates the empirical fact that output growth displays positive autocorrelation at short horizons. This hump-shaped output behavior arises because households delay their investment decisions until agency costs are at their lowest--a point in time several periods after the initial shock.

This paper develops an approach to the study of democratic policy-making where politicians are selected by the people from those citizens who present themselves as candidates for public office. The approach has a number of attractive features. First, it is a conceptualization of a pure form of representative democracy in which government is by, as well as of, the people. Second, the model is analytically tractable, being able to handle multidimensional issue and policy spaces very naturally. Third, it provides a vehicle for answering normative questions about the performance of representative democracy.