I consider a common agency model under adverse selection with a risk averse agent. Contracting takes place ex ante when all players have symmetric, although incomplete, information. The coordination problem between principals leads to more distortion in the optimal policy from the first best...

We use a mechanism design approach to study the organization of interest groups in an informational model of lobbying. Interest groups influence the legislature only by communicating private information on their preferences and not by means of monetary transfers. Interest groups have private...

This paper uses a mechanism design approach to characterize the optimal organization of lobbying groups in a political context where those groups have private information on their ideal points in a one-dimensional policy space. First, we derive the optimal mechanism for one single group and show...

We consider a delegation problem with a potentially uninformed agent when the principal cannot use monetary payments. If the bias between the principal and the agent is large, then the optimal delegation set is an interval. When the bias is small or medium however, the optimal delegation set is...

We present a Theory of Contracts under costly enforcement in the context of a dynamic relationship between an uninformed buyer and a seller who is privately informed on his persistent cost at the outset. Public enforcement relies on remedies for breach. Private enforcement comes from severing...

The President and the Senate bargain over the appointment of the Head of a key government department. The operating unit of the department has private information about its operating environment. We model the appointment process as a constrained delegation of policymaking to the operating unit...

Polarized interest groups (principals) compete to influence a decision-maker (agent) through monetary contributions. This decision-maker chooses a one-dimensional policy and has private information about his ideal point. Competition between interest groups under asymmetric information yields a...