Corporate Finance.

• Position: Bureau News - Panel Discussion

The NBER's Program on Corporate Finance met in Chicago on April 9. Mitchell A. Petersen, NBER and Northwestern University, and Paola Sapienza, Northwestern University, organized this program:

Philip Bond, University of Pennsylvania, "Optimal Plaintiff Incentives When Courts are Imperfect"

Discussant: Luigi Zingales, NBER and University of Chicago

Francesca Cornelli and David Goldreich, London Business School, and Alexander Ljungqvist, New York University, "Pre-IPO Markets"

Discussant: Kent Womack, Dartmouth College

Leora Klapper and Luc Laeven, World Bank, and Raghuram Rajah, International Monetary Fund, "Business Environment and Firm Entry: Evidence from International Data"

Discussant: Mihir A. Desai, NBER and Harvard University

Noel Maurer, Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico, and Stephen Haber, NBER and Stanford University, "Related Lending and Economic Performance: Evidence from Mexico"

Discussant: Randall S. Kroszner, NBER and University of Chicago

Michael Greenstone, NBER and MIT; Paul Oyer, NBER and Stanford University; and Annette Vissing-Jorgensen, NBER and Northwestern University; "Mandated Disclosure, Stock Returns, and the 1964 Securities Acts Amendments"

Discussants: Roberta Romano, NBER and Yale University

John R. Graham, Duke University, and Krishnamoorthy Narasimhan, University of Pennsylvania, "Corporate Survival and Managerial Experiences During the Great Depression"

Discussant: Antoinette Schoar, NBER and MIT

Ayla Kayhan, University of Texas, and Sheridan Titman, NBER and University of Texas, "Firms' Histories and Their Capital Structure"

Discussant: Malcolm Baker, NBER and Harvard University

The plaintiff's incentives in a lawsuit are affected by a variety of legal rules. One example is the proportion of the fine imposed on the defendant that is awarded to the plaintiff. Another is the identity of the plaintiff" private litigants are motivated by the prospect of receiving damages, while government employees (public prosecutors or employees of regulatory agencies) instead are rewarded (if at all) by career advancement. Bond examines the interactions between court characteristics and plaintiff incentives on the deterrence provided by contracts/laws/regulations. He shows that a key determinant of the optimal level of plaintiff incentives is the extent to which a party arguing "against the facts" is able to influence the court, relative to the party arguing with the facts. When the court is more susceptible to the...