The paper investigates a two-factor affine model for the credit spreads on corporate bonds. The first factor can be interpreted as the level of the spread, and the second factor is the volatility of the spread. The riskless interest rate is modeled using a standard two-factor affine model, thus...

Using a new dataset of bid and offer quotes for credit default swaps, we investigate the relationship between theoretical determinants of default risk and actual market premia using linear regression. These theoretical determinants are firm leverage, volatility and the riskless interest rate. We...

We provide an introductory review to the application of the theory of incentives under asymmetry of information to the exploitation and management of natural resources. We concentrate mostly on principalagent problems with adverse selection as posed by the regulation of nonrenewable resources,...

We analyze optimal trading mechanisms in environments where each trader owns some units of a good to be traded and may be either a seller or a buyer, depending on the realization of privately observed valuations. First, the concept of virtual valuation is extended to ex ante unidentified...

Our objective in this paper is to illustrate and better understand the unavoidable arbitrage between incentives and flexibility in contexts of asymmetric information and to characterize the general features of an appropriate response to this challenge. We show that procedures and institutions in...

This paper studies the implications of non-commitment for organizational design. An organizational form must trade-off between the coordination benefits associated with the centralization of information and its associated costs in terms of renegotiation. This analysis makes precise what these...

In a theoretical model, we analyze the effects of various kinds of demand- and supply-side incentives in the context of a model in which patients and doctors must decide not only on an aggregate quantity of health services to use in treating various kinds of illness, but also have a choice...

Suppose an entrepreneur needs funds from a financier to invest in a risky project whose cost is fixed, and whose return may be high or low. Suppose also that the project's realized return is an information that is private to the entrepreneur. If the amount the entrepreneur pays back to the...

In existing papers on dynamic incentive contracts, the dynamic structure of the principal-agent relationship arises exclusively from the ability of the principal to learn about the hidden information over time. In this paper we deal with a different source of dynamics, which is considered...

The recent automobile liability insurance crisis in Atlantic Canada has prompted the four provincial legislations (Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island) to setup a task force to redesign, if necessary, the personal automobile insurance system. After...