It has long been standard in agency theory to search for incentive-compatible mechanisms on the assumption that people care only about their own material wealth. However, this assumption is clearly refuted by numerous experiments, and we feel that it may be useful to consider nonpecuniary...

We analyze the determinants of real estate and credit bubbles using a unique borrower-lender matched dataset on mortgage loans in Spain. The dataset contain real estate credit and price conditions (loan principal and spread, and the appraisal and market price) at the mortgage level, matched with...

This work studies the organization of less-than-truckload trucking from a contractual point of view. We show that the huge number of owner-operators working in the industry hides a much less fragmented reality. Most of those owner-operators are “quasi-integrated” in higher organizational...

A welfare analysis of unemployment insurance (UI) is performed in a general equilibrium job search model. Finitely-lived, risk-averse workers smooth consumption over time by accumulating assets, choose search effort when unemployed, and suffer disutility from work. Firms hire workers, purchase...

Large law firms seem to prefer hourly fees over contingent fees. This paper provides a moral hazard explanation for this pattern of behavior. Contingent legal fees align the interests of the attorney with those of the client, but not necessarily with those of the partnership. We show that the...

In this paper, I analyze the ownership dynamics of N strategic risk-averse corporate insiders facing a moral hazard problem. A solution for the equilibrium share price and the dynamics of the aggregate insider stake is obtained in two cases: when agents can credibly commit to an optimal...

We analyze a mutual fire insurance mechanism used in Andorra, which is called La Crema in the local language. This mechanism relies on households' announced property values to determine how much a household is reimbursed in the case of a fire and how payments are apportioned among other...

This paper shows that models where preferences of individuals depend not only on their allocations, but also on the well-being of other persons, can produce both large and testable effects. We study the allocation of workers with heterogeneous productivities to firms. We show that even small...

This paper characterizes the relationship between entrepreneurial wealth and aggregate investment under adverse selection. Its main finding is that such a relationship need not be monotonic. In particular, three results emerge from the analysis: (i) pooling equilibria, in which investment is...

The financial crisis of 2007-08 has underscored the importance of adverse selection in financial markets. This friction has been mostly neglected by macroeconomic models of financial imperfections, however, which have focused almost exclusively on the effects of limited pledgeability. In this...