We study learning in perfect competition. A representative price-taking firm sells a good whose quality is unknown to some buyers. The uninformed buyers use the price to infer information about quality. Even though the firm is a price-taker, information is disseminated though the price. It is...

Using a unique, hand-collected data set on hedging activities of 150 US oil and gas producers, we study the determinants of hedging strategy choice. We also examine the economic effects of hedging strategy on firms’ risk, value and performance. We model hedging strategy choice as a multi-state...

We consider situations where legal liability yields insufficient incentives for socially efficient behavior, e.g., individuals who cause harm are not always sued or are unable to pay fully for harm done. Some individuals nevertheless behave efficiently because of intrinsic prosocial concerns....

We embed learning (without experimentation) in optimal growth. We extend the Mirman-Zilcha results of stochastic optimal growth to the learning case. We use recursive methods to study the effect of learning on the dynamic program by considering the case of iso-elastic utility and linear...

This paper investigates how firms design the maturity of their hedging programs, and the real effects of maturity choice on firm value and risk. Using a new dataset on hedging activities of 150 U.S. oil and gas producers, we find strong evidence that hedging maturity is influenced by investment...

We provide sufficient conditions for the first-order approach in the principal-agent problem when the agent’s utility has the non-separable form u(y - c(a)) where y is the contractual payoff and c(a) is the money cost of effort. We first consider a decision-maker facing prospects which cost...

Securitization is one of the most important innovations in financial markets. It is a process of converting illiquid loans that cannot be sold readily to third-party investors into liquid securities and selling them to dispersed investors. As a result, securitization improves liquidity in...

We analyze the legal reform concerning employees' inventions in Germany. Using a simple principal-agent model, we derive a unique efficient payment scheme: a bonus which is contingent on the project value. We demonstrate that the old German law creates inefficient incentives. However, the new...

Road safety policies and automobile insurance contracts often use incentive mechanisms based on traffic violations and accidents to promote safe driving. Can these mechanisms improve road safety efficiently? Do they reduce asymmetric information between drivers and insurers and regulators? In...