We show that every sequential screening model is equivalent to a standard text book static screening model. We use this result and apply well-established techniques from static screening to obtain solutions for classes of sequential screening models for which standard sequential screening...

This paper studies a principal-agent relation in which the principal's private information about the agent's effort choice is more accurate than a noisy public performance measure. For some contingencies the optimal contract has to specify ex post inefficiencies in the form of inefficient...

We analyze the optimal allocation of authority in an organization whose members have conflicting preferences. One party has decision-relevant private information, and the party who obtains authority decides in a self-interested way. As a novel element in the literature on decision rights, we...

Consider managers evaluating their employees' performances. Should managers justify their subjective evaluations? Suppose a manager's evaluation is private information. Justifying her evaluation is costly but limits the principal's scope for distorting her evaluation of the employee. I show that...

We study an organization with a top management (principal) and multiple subunits (agents) with private information that determine the organization's aggregate efficiency. Under centralization, eliciting the agents' private information may induce the principal to manipulate aggregate information,...

We consider a monopolistic certifier selling certification services to a partially privately informed seller. The certifier can enable the seller to disclose her private information publicly, as well as gather additional market information about the good's quality publicly. We show that the...

In many trade environments - such as online markets - buyers fully learn their valuation for goods only after contracting. I characterize the buyer-optimal ex-ante information in such environments. Employing a classical sequential screening framework, I find that buyers prefer to remain...

We consider a single object allocation problem with multidimensional signals and interdependent valuations. When agents' signals are statistically independent, Jehiel and Moldovanu [Efficient design with interdependent valuations, Econometrica, 69(5):1237-1259, 2001] show that efficient and...

This paper analyzes optimal product lines when consumers differ both in their taste for quality and in their desire for social image. The market outcome features partial pooling and product differentiation that is not driven by heterogeneous valuations for quality but by image concerns. A...