1,720,965 research outputs found

    Auction Design with Advised Bidders

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    This paper studies efficient and optimal auction design where bidders do not know their values and solicit advice from informed but biased advisors via a cheap-talk game. When advisors are biased toward overbidding, we characterize efficient equilibria of static auctions and equilibria of the English auction under the NITS condition (Chen, Kartik and Sobel (2008)). In static auctions, advisors transmit a coarsening of their information and a version of the revenue equivalence holds. In contrast, in the English auction, information is transmitted perfectly from types in the bottom of the distribution, and pooling happens only at the top. Under NITS, any equilibrium of the English auction dominates any efficient equilibrium of any static auction in terms of both efficiency and the seller's revenue. The distinguishing feature of the English auction is that information can be transmitted over time and bidders cannot submit bids below the current price of the auction. This results in a higher efficiency due to better information transmission and allows the seller to extract additional profits from the overbidding bias of advisors. When advisors are biased toward underbidding, there is an equilibrium of the Dutch auction that is more efficient than any efficient equilibrium of any static auction, however, it can bring lower expected revenue. Keywords auction design, cheap-talk, full revelation, english auction, communicatio

    Strategic and Financial Bidders in Takeover Auctions

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    Using data on auctions of companies, we estimate valuations (maximum willingness to pay) of strategic and financial bidders from their bids. We find that a typical target is valued higher by strategic bidders. However, 22.4% of targets in our sample are valued higher by financial bidders. These are mature, poorly performing companies. We also find that (i) valuations of different strategic bidders are more dispersed and (ii) valuations of financial bidders are correlated with aggregate economic conditions. Our results suggest that different targets appeal to different types of bidders, rather than that strategic bidders always value targets more because of synergies

    Timing Decisions in Organizations: Communication and Authority in a Dynamic Environment

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    We consider a problem where an uninformed principal makes a timing decision interacting with an informed but biased agent. Because time is irreversible, the direction of the bias crucially affects the agent's ability to credibly communicate information. When the agent favors late decision making, full information revelation often occurs. In this case, centralized decision making, where the principal retains authority and communicates with the agent, implements the optimal decision-making rule. When the agent favors early decision making, communication is partial, and the optimal decision-making rule is not implemented. Delegation adds value when the bias is for early decision making, but not for late decision making

    Investment busts, reputation, and the temptation to blend in with the crowd

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    We provide a real-options model of an industry in which agents time abandonment of their projects in an effort to protect their reputations. Agents delay abandonment attempting to signal quality. When a public common shock forces abandonment of a small fraction of projects irrespective of agents' quality, many agents abandon their projects strategically even if they are unaffected by the shock. Such "blending in with the crowd" effect creates an additional incentive to delay abandonment ahead of the shock, leading to accumulation of "living dead" projects, which further amplifies the shock. The potential for moderate public common shocks often improves agents' values. Keywords: abandonment; real options; signaling; asymmetric information; reputatio

    Real Options Signaling Games with Applications to Corporate Finance

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    We study games in which the decision to exercise an option is a signal of private information to outsiders, whose beliefs affect the utility of the decision-maker. Signaling incentives distort the timing of exercise, and the direction of distortion depends on whether the decision-maker's utility increases or decreases in outsiders' belief about the payoff from exercise. In the former case, signaling incentives erode the value of the option to wait and speed up option exercise, while in the latter case option exercise is delayed. We demonstrate the model's implications through four corporate finance settings: investment under managerial myopia, venture capital grandstanding, investment under cash flow diversion, and product market competition. The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for Financial Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: [email protected]., Oxford University Press.

    Competition among Sellers in Securities Auctions

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    We study simultaneous security-bid second-price auctions with competition among sellers for potential bidders. The sellers compete by designing ordered sets of securities that the bidders can offer as payment for the assets. Upon observing auction designs, potential bidders decide which auctions to enter. We characterize all symmetric equilibria and show that there always exist equilibria in which auctions are in standard securities or their combinations. In large markets the unique equilibrium is auctions in pure cash. We extend the model for competition in reserve prices and show that binding reserve prices never constitute equilibrium as long as equilibrium security designs are not call options. (JEL D44, D82, G10)

    Optimal Dynamic Capital Budgeting

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    © The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Review of Economic Studies Limited. I study optimal design of a dynamic capital allocation process in an organization in which the division manager with empire-building preferences privately observes the arrival and properties of investment projects, and headquarters can audit projects at a cost. Under certain conditions, a budgeting mechanism with threshold separation of financing is optimal. Headquarters: (1) allocate a spending account to the manager and replenish it over time; (2) set a threshold, such that projects below it are financed from the account, while projects above are financed fully by headquarters upon an audit. Further analysis studies when co-financing of projects is optimal and how the size of the account depends on past performance of projects

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed

    Variations on the Author

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    “Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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