We derive the shape of optimal unemployment insurance (UI) contracts when agents can exert search effort but face different search costs and have private information about their type. We derive a recursive solution of our dynamic adverse selection problem with repeated moral hazard. Conditions...

A standard hidden information model is considered to study the influence of the a priori productivity distribution on the optimal contract. A priori more productive (hazard rate dominant) agents work less, enjoy lower rents, but generate a higher expected surplus.

Rothschild and Stiglitz (1976) show that there need not exist a competitive equilibrium in markets with adverse selection. Building on their framework we demonstrate that externalities between agents - an agent's utility upon accepting a contract depends on the average type attracted by the...

This paper characterizes the optimal redistributive taxation when individuals are heterogeneous in two exogenous dimensions: their skills and their values of non-market activities. Search-matching frictions on the labor markets create unemployment. Wages, labor demand and participation are...

We consider a model of on-the-job search where firms offer long-term wage contracts to workers of different ability. Firms do not observe worker ability upon hiring but learn it gradually over time. With sufficiently strong information frictions, low-wage firms offer separating contracts and...

In this paper we study the delegation of a production process in a three-tier hierarchy. The principal contracts directly only with the supplier that produces the first input leaving him in charge of the contract for the production of the second input. We allow the principal to costlessly...

An increasingly important organisational design problem for many firms is to recoup general human capital rents while maintaining attractive career prospects for workers. We explore the role of information management in this context. In our model, an information management policy determines the...

Negotiations often take long a time even if a delay in the agreement is inefficient. One typical explanation is the existence of private information of at least one party; the time is then a discriminating instrument. The paper starts by pointing out that this result does not hold once the...

We study a model of informed principal with private values where the principal is risk neutral and the agent is risk averse. We show that the principal, regardless of her type, gains by not revealing her type to the agent through the contract offer. The equilibrium allocation transfers some...

We exploit administrative data on young German workers and their employers to study the long-term effects of an early job loss. To account for non-random sorting of workers into firms with different turnover rates and for selective job mobility, we use changes over time in firm- and age-specific...