Why do larger corporations have more layers in their hierarchy? My contention in this paper is that hierarchies arise because economic agents have limited ability to anticipate and ascertain every possible contingency they are faced with. As a result, the complete contract may become too complex...

This paper explores several aspects of the vertical relationship between an upstream firm and a number of downstream firms that are Cournot rivals relying on the inputs provided by the upstream firm. We address the following questions: (i) if the upstream firm can charge different prices to...

Favoritism in vertical relationship is a situation in which an upstream firm sets favorable exchange conditions to some agents at the expense of others. This paper explores the reason for, and direction of, favoritism in the vertical relationship between an upstream firm and a number of...

Deterring the formation or continuation of cartels is a major objective of antitrust policy. We develop a dynamic framework to characterize the compensation and deterrence properties of fines, based on the fact that cartel stability depends on the ability to prevent deviation, which itself...

We analyse the effects of a price floor on price wars in the retail market for gasoline. Our theoretical model assumes a Bertrand oligopoly supergame in which firms initially collude by charging the monopolistic price. Once firms detect a deviation from this strategy, they switch to a lower...

This paper looks at the dynamic properties of insurance contracts when insurers have better technology at preventing catastrophic losses than the insured. The prevention technology is owned by the insurers and is permanent. If long-term contracts are not possible, the insured is faced with a...

In this paper, we examine the effect of increases in health care costs and general inflation on optimal insurance policies and waste in a model of imperfect information with costly auditing. We show that in such a setting, individuals will buy more than full insurance. Moreover, as the cost of...

An extensive academic literature exists on the optimal compensation of top executives. A less-developed literature pertains to the optimal compensation of middle management personnel. The goal of this paper is to address that concern. The setup we use is that of a firm s president (the...

This paper addresses the question of whether R&D should be carried out by an independent research unit or be produced in-house by the firm marketing the innovation. We define two organizational structures. In an integrated structure, the firm that markets the innovation also carries out and...

This paper characterizes the optimal insurance contract in an environment where an informed agent can misrepresent the state of the world to a principal who cannot credibly commit to an auditing strategy. Because the principal cannot commit, the optimal strategy of the agent is not to tell the...