Governments dislike poorly performing public firms and often see deregulation and privatisation as a way to improve performance and social welfare. From a theoretical point of view poor performance may be due to information asymmetries between the informed public firm and the relatively...

This paper analyzes the effects of managerial discretion and some possible solutions in non-profit sector. It is shown how the traditional incentives’ mechanisms are modified in a non-profit setting. In particular, market, reputational and ideological incentives are considered. The analysis...

We discuss a principal-agent model in which the principal has the opportunity to include a non-compete agreement in the employment contract. We show that not imposing such an agreement can be beneficial for the principal as the possibility to leave the firm generates implicit incentives for the...

We discuss a principal-agent model in which the principal has the opportunity to include a non-compete agreement in the employment contract. We show that if the agent faces limited liability and there is an incentive problem the principal prefers not to impose such a clause if and only if the...

This paper analyzes a multi-task agency framework where the agent exhibits task-specific abilities. Besides investigating the appendant consequences of applying incongruent performance measures in incentive contracts, this paper demonstrates how the provision of incentives - including the...

This paper is primarily aimed at highlighting the role and significance of asymmetric information in contributing to financial contagion. Furthermore, in emphasising the importance of greater disclosure requirements and the need for the disclosure of information relating to “close links”,...

This note demonstrates how performance measure congruity and noise determine an agency’s total surplus within an linear agency framework with multiple tasks. It provides a decomposition of agency costs, leading back to a congruity index previously proposed in the literature. In addition,...

It has been argued that competing banks make inefficiently frequent use of collateralization in situations where they are better able to evaluate a project's risk than entrepreneurs. We study the bank's choice between screening and collateralization in a model where banks do not have this...

The effects of bank competition and institutions on credit markets are usually studied separately although both factors are interdependent. We study the effect of bank competition on the choice of contracts (screening versus collateralized credit contract) and explicitly capture the impact of...

It has been argued that competing banks make inefficiently frequent use of collateralization in situations where they are better able to evaluate a project’s risk than entrepreneurs. We study the bank’s choice between screening and collateralization in a model where banks do not...