A principal contracts optimally with an agent to operate a firm over an infinite time horizon when the agent is liquidity constrained and has access to private information about the sequence of cost realizations. We formulate this mechanism design problem as a recursive dynamic program in which...

When a firm is able to recognize its previous customers, it may use information about their purchase histories to price discriminate. We analyze a model with a monopolist and a continuum of heterogeneous consumers, where consumers are able to maintain their anonymity and avoid being identified...

We study a dynamic model of fraud and trust-building featuring two parties: a principal, who has limited power of commitment and who wishes to accept real projects and reject fake ones, and an agent, who is either an ethical type that produces only a real project, or a strategic type that...

The incentives for an advisor first to diligently perform research and second to accurately report her results are investigated in a model of optimal contracting. To motivate the advisor to collect and analyze the relevant data, her compensation must include a contingent component that depends...

We study the optimal incentive scheme for a multistage project in which the agent privately observes intermediate progress. The optimal contract involves a "soft deadline" wherein the principal guarantees funding up to a certain date -- if the agent reports progress at that date, then the...

Motivated by the unprecedented availability of consumer information on the Internet, we characterize the winners and losers from potential privacy regulation in the context of four commonly-used oligopoly models: a linear city model, a circular city model, a vertical differentiation model, and a...