This paper studies strategic delegation in two-player contests for an indivisible prize (as in, e.g. litigation) where one party's probability of winning is determined by the relative investments of both. Even though neither player stands to gain anything from the possibility of one player...

The continuous-time principal-agent model with exponential utility developed by Holmström and Milgrom (1987) and generalized by Schättler and Sung (1993, 1996) and Sung (1995) admits a simple closed-form solution: The second-best sharing rule is linear in output. Unfortunately, the first-best...

Would you go to the dentist more often if it were free? Observational data is here used to analyze the impact of full-coverage insurance on dental care utilization using different identification strategies. The challenge of assessing the bite of moral hazard without an experimental study design...

This paper analyzes optimal insurance against unemployment and disability in a private information economy with endogenous health and search effort. Individuals can reduce the probability of becoming disabled by exerting, so-called, prevention effort, which is costly in terms of utility. A...

Recent literature has questioned the existence of a learning foundation for the partially cursed equilibrium. This paper closes the gap by showing that a partially cursed equilibrium corresponds to a particular analogy-based expectation equilibrium.

The traditional avoidance literature undeservedly neglects tax base distribution as a factor affecting the avoidance price, and generally assumed to be equal to the avoidance cost. In reality, avoidance providers are usually either high-skilled specialists or insiders. The strong collusion thus,...

We consider a leader and a subordinate he appoints who engage in team production. The public observes the organization’s performance, but is unable to determine the separate contributions of the leader and of the subordinate. The leader may therefore claim credit for the good work of his...

Failures of government policies often provoke opposite reactions from citizens; some call for a reversal of the policy while others favor its continuation in stronger form. We offer an explanation of such polarization, based on a natural bimodality of preferences in political and economic...

In this paper a persuasion game is analyzed, where "persuasion" is understood as an interested party's acquisition and transmission of information to a decision maker. The model allows for many interpretations, e.g., political lobbying or influence activities in organizations. Individuals' ex...

Payments in kind pose an enduring and empirically important puzzle. The paper provides a formalization of the popular view that payment in kind are due to financial constraints. The key assumption is that buyers' liquidity is private information. Buyers who are financially constrained may prove...