In the presence of a time-inconsistency problem with optimal agency contracts, we show that competitive markets implement allocations that Pareto dominate those achieved by a benevolent planner, they induce strictly more effort, and they sometimes make the commitment problem disappear entirely....

We study the effect of countries' energy abundance on trade and sector activity, conditional on sector's energy intensity, using an unbalanced panel with 14 high-income countries from Europe, America and Asia, 10 broad sectors, and years 1970-1997. We find that (i) countries with large energy...