I study the optimal contract when a principal cannot commit to an audit. The contract must provide incentives for the agent to comply as well as for the principal to audit. The key tradeoff is efficiency versus noncompliance instead of the familiar rent versus efficiency. Information rent is...

Both bribery and extortion weaken the power of incentives, but there is a trade-off in fighting the two because rewards to prevent supervisors from accepting bribes create incentives for extortion. Which is the worse evil? A fear of inducing extortion may make it optimal to tolerate bribery, but...

type="main" <p>We examine the power of incentives in bureaucracies by studying contracts offered by a bureaucrat to her agent. The bureaucrat operates under a fixed budget, optimally chosen by a funding authority, and she can engage in policy drift, which we define as inversely related to her...</p>