The paper analyzes the optimal delegation and ownership structure in a setting where the owner of a firm hires a manager to run the firm and to gather information on investment projects. The initial owner has two tasks: monitoring the manager and supervising project choice. Profits depend on...

We analyse how state university competition to collect resources may a¤ect both the quality of teaching and research. By considering a set-up where two state universities behave strategically, we model their interaction with potential students as a sequential noncooperative game. We show that...

Using a household production model of educational choices, we characterise a free market situation in which some agents ("high-wagers") educate their children full-time and spend a sizable amount of resources on them, while others ("low-wagers") educate them only partially. The free-market...

We analyze the voting behavior of a board of directors that has to approve (or reject) an investment proposal with uncertain return. We consider three types of directors: insiders, who are biased toward acceptance of the project, independent outsiders who want to maximize the firm's profit and...

We analyze the voting behavior of a small committee that has to approve or reject a proposal whose return is uncertain. Members have heterogenous preferences: some members want to maximize the expected value while other members have a bias toward project approval and ignore their private...

How does the distribution of individual preferences evolve as a result of marriage between individuals with different preferences? Could a family rule be self-enforcing given individual preferences, and remain such for several generations despite preference evolution? We show that it is in a...

We examine the second-best family policy under the assumption that both the number and the future earning capacities of the children born to a couple are random variables with probability distributions conditional on unobservable parental actions. Potential parents take their decisions without...

How does the distribution of individual preferences evolve as a result of marriage between individuals with different preferences? Could a family rule be self-enforcing given individual preferences, and remain such for several generations despite preference evolution? We show that it is in a...

Higher education is not just a signal of innate ability. At least a certain level of educational achievement (degree level, degree mark) is strictly required to perform a graduate job. School leavers fall into two categories, the rich and the poor. Ability is distributed in the same way in both...

The relationship between government and parents is modelled as a principal-agent problem, with the former in the role of principal and the latter in the role of agents. We make three major points. The first is that, if the well-being of the child depends not only on luck, but also on parental...