We investigate the terms of exchange between the legislative branch of the government and an administrative bureau with standard operating procedures. An administrative bureau is a not-for-profit public organisation responsible for the production of a non-marketable good. Such a bureau is...

In this paper we use mechanism design approach to find the optimal file-sharing mechanism in a peer-to-peer network. This mechanism improves upon existing incentive schemes. In particular, we show that peer-approved scheme is never optimal and service-quality scheme is optimal only under certain...

Under contingent fees the attorney gets a share of the judgement; under conditional fees the lawyer gets an upscale premium if the case is won which is, however, unrelated to the adjudicated amount. We compare conditional and contingent fees in a framework where lawyers are uninformed about the...

We consider resource allocation within an organisation when agents have a preference for autonomy and show how delegation bears on moral hazard and adverse selection. Agents may care about autonomy for reasons of job-satisfaction, status or greater reputation of perform-ance under autonomy....

A Bayesian supply function equilibrium is characterized in a market where firms have private information about their uncertain costs. It is found that with supply function competition, and in contrast to Bayesian Cournot competition, competitiveness is affected by the parameters of the...

We examine the effects of ex post revelation of information about the risk type or the risk-reducing behavior of insureds in automobile insurance markets both for perfect competition and for monopoly. Specifically, we assume that insurers can offer a contract with information revelation ex post,...

We study optimal patent design in a setting with sequential innovation. Firms innovate by undertaking "research" activities to generate new ideas and by undertaking "development" activities to transform these ideas into viable products. Both innovation incentives and the welfare costs of patent...

We show that a solution to the problem of mechanism selection by an informed principal exists in a large class of environments with “generalized private values”: the agents’ payoff functions are independent of the principal’s type. The solution is an extension of Maskin and Tirole’s...

We consider a model of on-the-job search where firms offer long-term wage contracts to workers of different ability. Firms do not observe worker ability upon hiring but learn it gradually over time. With sufficiently strong information frictions, low-wage firms offer separating contracts and...