Local merchant guilds were ubiquitous in medieval Europe, and their development was inextricably linked with the development of towns and the rise of the merchant class. We develop a theory of the emergence of local merchant guilds as an efficient mechanism to implement collusion among merchants...

We develop an agency model of organized crime accounting for the main trade-offs involved by the introduction of an accomplice-witness program. We characterize the optimal policy and identify its main determinants in a framework where public officials can be dishonest. Our predictions are tested...

We study a general equilibrium model where agents' preferences, productivity and labour endowments depend on their health status, and occupational choices affect individual health distributions. Efficiency typically requires agents of the same type to obtain different expected utilities if...

When a customer can borrow from several competing banks, multiple lending raises default risk. If creditor rights are poorly protected, this contractual externality can generate novel equilibria with strategic default and rationing, in addition to equilibria with excessive lending or...

This Paper proposes a theory of the optimal organization of delegated expertise. For incentive purposes, a principal should reward an expert when their recommendation is confirmed either by the facts or by other experts’ recommendations. With a single expert, we show that the agency costs of...

A risk averse agent gathers information on productivity shocks and produces accordingly on behalf of his principal. Information gathering is imperfect so that the agent has either complete or no knowledge at all of those shocks. The model allows for moral hazard in information gathering, private...

This Paper analyses the impact of asymmetric information within countries on the pattern of international trade. We append to the standard 2×2 Heckscher-Ohlin model of a small economy a continuum of sectors producing intermediate non-tradable goods. Those goods are produced by monopolies having...

This Paper analyses the link between the internal organization of firms, their individual life cycle and the whole process of macroeconomic growth. We present a Schumpeterian growth model in which firms face dynamic agency costs. These agency costs are due to the formation of vertical collusions...

When firms undertake activities which are environmentally risky, the divergence between social and private incentives to exert safety care requires public intervention. This control occurs both through ex ante regulation and ex post legal investigation. We delineate the respective scopes of...

This paper analyzes whether the two tasks of building infrastructures which are socially useful and managing those assets should be bundled or not. When performances contracts can be written, both tasks should be performed altogether by the same firm when a better design of the infrastructure...