Family firms, which are prevalent around the world both for small organizations and large corporations, are usually more performant than other types of firms. This paper draws on altruism and on the theory of incentives contracting to explain why family firms perform better. Assuming that...

In this paper, we consider a model that suggests that the theory of exchange with asymmetric information seems suitable to provide a possible explanation model of occurrence and duration of civil wars. We show that although civil conflicts are not Pareto optimal ex post they may be Pareto...

The aim of this paper is to study what is the best structure of a Board of Directors when collusive aspects between the Board and the CEO are taken into account. We analyze how shareholders should select the members of the Board in a framework with asymmetric information and uncertainty about...

Certifiers contribute to the sound functioning of markets by reducing a symmetric information. They, however, have been heavily criticized during the 2008-09 financial crisis. This paper investigates on which side of the market a monopolistic profit-maximizing certifier offers his service. If...

This paper analyzes bilateral contracting in an environment with contractual incompleteness and asymmetric information. One party (the seller) makes an unverifiable quality choice and the other party (the buyer) has private information about its valuation. A simple exit option contract, which...

In this paper we introduce markets for information about assets' payoffs in a two-period General Equilibrium Incomplete Markets Model. We consider asymmetric Walrasian equilibria with endogenous information allocations and analyze the interaction between demand for information and equilibrium...

The financial structure of firms is diverse. Firms issue many different types of financial claims. This article focuses on the seniority structure of debt contracts. It is outlined under what conditions firms can improve the outcome of their financial decisions by choosing seniority structure....

Compared with the traditional public-finance approach of a monolithic fully informed planner, earmarking of taxation is less likely to be optimal if a principal-agent setting is considered, where taxing and spending are performed by two separate agents which are monitored by the parliament. We...

In this paper we consider the problem of regulating an open access essential facility. A vertically integrated firm owns an essential input and operates on the downstream market under the roof of a regulatory mechanism. There is a potential entrant in the downstream market. Both competitors use...

We study the effect of asymmetric information in the labor market of a country on the occupational choice pattern of immigrants vis-à-vis natives. The choice is limited to self-employment and paid employment. The study is motivated by empirical observations that regular and irregular immigrants...