We consider the employment relation within firms with reference to investment in human capital. Although the firm knows the future value of the worker's human capital to the worker, the worker only finds this out after the training is complete. Both moral hazard and adverse selection problems...

In this paper several firms compete for the right to obtain intellectual property protection for a basic idea which has subsequent potential applications. The modelling employs an auction analogy, taking the context to be an n-player all-pay auction, with a reserve. We find that, even taking...

The effect of limited liability on debt contracts has been analysed as creating the possibility of credit rationing and hence inefficiently low levels of investment. In this paper we instead focus on restrictions on the use of debt finance to avoid moral hazard problems but which add...

Three designs of auctions with quality thresholds are considered. The quality threshold is not known with certainty by the bidders. In one scheme, quality plans submitted by potential bidders are evaluated first and price bids for only those plans that have been approved are invited. The second...