Price Bubbles Sans Dividend Anchors: Evidence from Laboratory Stock Markets

We experimentally explore how investor decision horizons influence the formation of stock prices. We find that in long-horizon sessions, where investors collect dividends till maturity, prices converge to the fundamental levels derived from dividends through backward induction. In short-horizon sessions, where investors exit the market by receiving the price (not dividends), prices levels and paths become indeterminate and lose dividend anchors; investors tend to form their expectations of future prices by forward, not backward, induction. These laboratory results suggest that investors' short horizons and the consequent difficulty of backward induction are important contributors to the emergence of price bubbles.stock price bubbles, short-term investors, backward induction, market experiments

What Makes Autonomous Management Do Well?: Corporate Governance without External Controls

We propose a model of the widely held firm where management may behave on behalf of shareholders even without external controls. The model shows that there exists a corporate governance mechanism inside the firm where workers are employed on a long-term basis. When effort of young workers depends on managerial decision-making, they give implicit pressure on the managers, which may substitute control by shareholders. If this mechanism works fairly well, it is optimal for shareholders to leave the firm autonomous. We also discuss how the firm's internal factors (such as retention rate and business information sharing) and external environments (such as product market competition and labor market rigidity) affect the efficacy of this internal governance mechanism.Corporate Governance, Management Autonomy, Shareholder Intervention, Long-term Employment