We introduce intention-based social preferences into mechanism design. We explore information structures that differ with respect to what is commonly known about the weight that agents attach to reciprocal kindness. When the designer has no information on reciprocity types, implementability of...

In a randomized field experiment, we investigate the connection between work goals, monetary incentives, and work performance. Employees are observed in a natural work environment where they have to do a simple, but effort-intense task. Output is perfectly observable and workers are paid for...

We experimentally test the effect of enforceable non-compete clauses on working efforts. The employee can invest into the probability of making a profitable innovation. After a successful innovation (Win) the employee may want to leave the firm (Shift) whereas after an innovation failure (Lose)...

The paper studies outside finance in a model of two-dimensional moral hazard, involving risk choices as well as effort choices. If the entrepreneur has insufficient funds, a first-best outcome cannot be implemented. Second-best outcomes involve greater failure risk than first-best outcomes. For...

Games with imperfect information often feature multiple equilibria, which depend on beliefs off the equilibrium path. Standard selection criteria such as passive beliefs, symmetric beliefs or wary beliefs rest on ad hoc restrictions on beliefs. We propose a new selection criterion that imposes...

The Mirrleesian model of income taxation restricts attention to simple allocation mechanism with no strategic interdependence, i.e., the optimal labor supply of any one individual does not depend on the labor supply of others. It has been argued by Piketty (1993) that this restriction is...

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...

We study whether a firm that produces and sells access to an excludable public good should face a self-financing requirement, or, alternatively, receive subsidies that help to cover the cost of public-goods provision. The main result is that the desirability of a self-financing requirement is...

The paper develops a technique for studying incentive problems with unidimensional hidden characteristics in a way that is independent of whether the type set is nite, the type distribution has a continuous density, or the type distribution has both mass points and an atomless part. By this...

This paper shows that bonus contracts may arise endogenously as a response to agency problems within banks, and analyzes how compensation schemes change in reaction to anticipated bail-outs. If there is a risk-shifting problem, bail-out expectations lead to steeper bonus schemes and even more...