The relationship between government and parents is modelled as a principal-agent problem, with the former in the role of principal and the latter in the role of agents. We make three major points. The first is that, if the well-being of the child depends not only on luck, but also on parental...

Student loans, even income-contingent ones, are not optimal. Potential university students with the appropriate characteristics should be offered a scholarship, dependent on both need and merit. The award of the scholarship should be conditional on the choice of university degree, but students...

We examine the effects of differences in social capital on first and second best transfers to families with children, in an asymmetric information context where the number of births, and the future earning capacity of each child that is born, are random variables. The probability that a couple...

Higher education is not just a signal of innate ability. At least a certain level of educational achievement (degree level, degree mark) is strictly required to perform a graduate job. School leavers fall into two categories, the rich and the poor. Ability is distributed in the same way in both...

How does the distribution of individual preferences evolve as a result of marriage between individuals with different preferences? Could a family rule be self-enforcing given individual preferences, and remain such for several generations despite preference evolution? We show that it is in a...

We demonstrate that the notion of a “family constitution” (self-enforcing, renegotiation-proof family norm) requiring adults to provide attention for elderly parents carries over from a world where sexually indifferentiated individuals reproduce by cell separation, to one where individuals...

How does the distribution of individual preferences evolve as a result of marriage between individuals with different preferences? Could a family rule be self-enforcing given individual preferences, and remain such for several generations despite preference evolution? We show that it is in a...

We analyze the effects of optimism and overconfidence when the manager's compensation package includes severance pay and the CEO has bargaining power. We find that optimism does not affect incentive pay but increases severance pay with a negative effect on profit. Overconfidence, on the...

We analyze optimal compensation schedules for the directors of two plants belonging to the same owner and producing the same good but serving geographically differentiated markets. Since the outcome of each director depends on his own effort and on a random variable representing market...

The paper analyzes the optimal structure of the board of directors in a firm with a large shareholder sitting on the board. In a one-tier structure the sole board performs all tasks, while in a two-tier structure the management board is in charge of project selection and the supervisory board is...