This paper analyzes the use of alternative performance measures in an agency model in which contracting incorporates both formal and informal agreements. It is shown that under a proper use of verifiable and unverifiable performance measures, the two types of contracts are complements, regardless of the principal’s fallback position. The analysis therefore contrasts earlier results of the liter...

This study examines the relationship between investor demand for IPOs prior to offerings and aftermarket performance of IPO firms during the period from 1993 to 1997 in the Hong Kong stock market. The paper finds that the IPOs with high investor demand have large positive initial returns but negative longer-run excess returns, while the IPOs with low investor demand have negative initial return...

We revisit an investment experiment that compares the performance of an investor using Bayesian methods for determining portfolio weights with an investor that uses the Monte Carlo based resampling approach advocated in Michaud (1998). Markowitz and Usmen (2003) showed that the Michaud investor always won. However, in the original experiment, the Bayes investor was handicapped because the algor...

The following case study analyzes the company Cargus, a Spanish manufacturer and distributor of an innovative stationary bicycle. It also provides an insight into the company’s product positioning and promotion, business strategy, and management style. Although the names of the business and employees are disguised, all other aspects are factual. Cargus introduced an innovative stationary bicycl...

A few recent papers have derived estimates of the representative agent's risk aversion by comparing the statistical density of asset returns and the state-price density. The implied risk aversion estimates obtained in these studies are puzzling, exhibiting (i) pronounced U-shaped patterns (a smile ) and (ii) negative values. This paper analyzes three potential explanations for these phenomena: ...

We introduce a general continuous–time model for an illiquid financial market where the trades of a single large investor can move market prices. The model is specified in terms of parameter dependent semimartingales, and its mathematical analysis relies on the non–linear integration theory of such semimartingale families. The Itô–Wentzell formula is used to prove absence of arbitrage for the l...

Global health networks—webs of individuals and organizations linked by a shared concern for a particular condition—have proliferated over the past quarter century. In a recent editorial in this journal, I presented evidence that their effectiveness in addressing four challenges—problem definition, positioning, coalitionbuilding and governance—shapes their ability to influence policy. The editor...

We consider the portfolio problem in continuous-time where the objective of the investor or money manager is to exceed the performance of a given stochastic benchmark, as is often the case in institutional money management. The benchmark is driven by a stochastic process that need not be perfectly correlated with the investment opportunities, and so the market is in a sense incomplete. We first...

The paper analyzes how uncertainty on traders’ participation affects a competitive security market in which there are some informed traders. We show that discontinuities, or "crashes", can arise at equilibrium, even when no investor posts a priori an increasing demand. Because of uncertain participation, the precision of the information brought by a price is endogenous, affected by the size of ...