This paper examines the effects of a competitive fringe on a regulated firm. Using Hart's (1983) model, we show that competition weakens the managerial incentives for cost reduction: when there is correlation between the cost levels of the firms in the industry, costs are higher in the regulated...

When today’s actions can affect tomorrow's value of an asset and when the principal does not have access to hard information, either about productive activity or monitoring activity, two incentive problems must be simultaneously solved: first, the ‘ex-ante’ moral hazard problem of inducing...

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...

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...

We study how career concerns affect the dynamics of incentives in a multi-period contract, when the agent’s productivity is a stochastic function of his past productivity and investment. We show that incentives are stronger and performance is higher when the contract approaches its expiry...

We develop and estimate a model of dynamic interactions in which commitment is limited and contracts are incomplete to explain the patterns of income and consumption growth in village economies of less developed countries. Households can insure each other through both formal contracts and...

We examine a Bertrand competition game between two intermediaries offering matching services between two sides of a market. Indirect network externalities arise as the probability of finding one's match with a given intermediary increase with the number of agents of the other side who use the...

Principal-agent models of moral hazard have been developed under the assumption that the principal knows the agent's risk-aversion. This Paper extends the moral hazard model to the case when the agent's risk-aversion is his private information, so that the model also exhibits adverse selection....

We develop and estimate a model of dynamic interactions where commitment is limited and contracts are incomplete to explain the patterns of income and consumption growth in village economies of less developed countries. Households can insure through both formal contracts and informal agreements,...

The World Wide Web was originally a totally English-based medium due to its US origin. Although the presence of other languages has steadily risen, content in English is still dominant, which raises a natural question of how bilingualism of consumers of a home country affects production of web...