Contracts often reward inefficient tasks and are not enforced ex post. We provide a new explanation based on the relationship between explicit contracts and implicit agreements, distinguishing the ex-ante decision to sign a contract from the ex-post decision whether to apply it. We show that it...

We study a two-period moral hazard problem with risk-neutral and wealth-constrained agents and three identical tasks. We show that the allocation of tasks over time is important if there is a capacity constraint on the number of tasks that can be performed in one period. We characterize the...