The agency problem that arises from the separation of ownership and control (Berle and Means, 1932)has been a major focus of the literature on corporate finance and the theory of the firm over the last twenty years. Various insti- tutional arrangements exist to deal with this agency problem and one that has attracted a lot of attention is the market for corporate control. Manne
Chapter 5 Dynamic Contracting 5.1 Incomplete contracts In our earlier treatment of contracting problems, we assumed that the in- centive problem was generated by asymmetric information, either a problem of moral hazard(hidden actions)or adverse selection(hidden information) The incomplete contracts approach eschews asymmetric information because of its intractability and instead focuses on environments in which informa- tion is observable but not verifiable
9.1 Critique of existing procedures (i) Auctions. The problem with auctions is that assets sold off piecemeal may be sold at a substantial discount The financing problem. It takes too long to raise money from a large number of investors. A small number of investors may be risk averse and unwilling to pay the expected value of the assets
These notes introduce some ideas for modeling markets with adverse selec- tion. This framework was originally intended to deal with markets that cannot be easily accommodated by the standard signaling game e. g, be- cause there is two-sided adverse selection. For present purposes, however, it is enough to deal with the simplest case in which there is adverse selection
