decision is developed under these assumptions. The mode1 shows that firms may refuse to issue stock, and therefore may pass up valuable investment opportunities. The model suggests explanations for several aspects of corporate financing behavior, including the tendency to rely on internal sources of funds

Planning under uncertainty is a central problem in the study of automated sequential decision making, and has been addressed by researchers in many different fields, including AI planning, decision analysis, operations research, control theory and economics. While the assumptions

This paper studies the flows of funds into and out of equity mutual funds. Consumers base their fund purchase decisions on prior performance information, but do so asymmetrically, investing disproportionately more in funds that performed very well the prior period. Search costs seem

overallocate to stocks by a sizeable amount. ONE OF THE MORE STRIKING EMPIRICAL FINDINGS in recent financial research is the evidence of predictability in asset returns. 1 In this paper we examine the implications of this predictability for an investor seeking to make sensible portfolio allocation decisions

I analyze financing policies in a firm owned by atomistic shareholders who observe neither cash flows nor management’s investment decisions. Management derives perquisites from investment and invests as much as possible. Since it always claims that cash flow is too low to fund all positive net

, choice is infinite. From classic economic theo-ries of free enterprise, to mundane marketing practices that provide customers with entire aisles devoted to potato chips or soft drinks, to important life decisions in which people contemplate alternative career options or multiple investment opportunities

We test the dividend and leverage predictions of the tradeoff and pecking order models. As both models predict, more profitable firms have higher long-term dividend payouts, and firms with more investments have lower payouts. Confirming the pecking order model but contradicting the tradeoff model

This paper examines the effect of the labor-leisure choice on portfolio and consumption decisions over an individual’s life cycle. The model incorporates the fact that individuals may have considerable flexibility in varying their work effort (including their choice of when to retire). Given

Sequential decision making is a fundamental task faced by any intelligent agent in an extended interaction with its environment; it is the act of answering the question "What should I do now?" In this thesis, I show how to answer this question when "now" is one of a finite set

associative strengths in behavioral models, or connection weights in connectionist networks. Because this report is oriented primarily toward the non-engineer interested in animal learning, it presents tutorials on stochastic sequential decision tasks, stochastic dynamic programming, and parameter estimation.