This thesis is a collection of essays that uses theoretical and experimental methods to explore institutional persistence, contract structure, and authority. Chapter One studies the informational and efficiency properties of institutions that form to reduce moral hazard. While in the short run...

Regulation is very persistent, even when inefficient. We propose an explanation for regulatory persistence based on regulatory fog, the phenomenon by which regulation obscures information regarding the value of counterfactual policies. We construct a dynamic model of regulation in which the...