This paper uses the NBER Patents and Citations Data merged with COMPUSTAT to identify and measure the dependency of innovation success on cash holdings in a patent race environment where firms race to innovate first and their innovation efforts are correlated. A firm's cash holdings increase its...

I study a principal-agent model in which the agent collects information and then chooses a verifiable action. I show that the principal can find it desirable to constrain the agent's action set even though there is no disagreement about the ranking of actions ex post. The elimination or...

We study strategic information transmission in a Sender-Receiver game where players' optimal actions depend on the realization of multiple signals but the players disagree on the relative importance of each piece of news. We characterize a statistical environment - featuring symmetric loss...

This paper explores how to optimally set taxes and transfers when taxation authorities are uninformed about individuals' value of time in both market and nonmarket activities; and can observe both market-income and time allocated to market employment. We show that optimal redistribution in this...

I study a principal-agent model in which the agent collects information and then chooses a verifiable action. I show that the principal can find it desirable to constrain the agent's action set even though there is no disagreement about the ranking of actions "ex post". The elimination or...

I study covert information acquisition and reporting in a principal agent problem allowing for general technologies of information acquisition. When posteriors satisfy two dimensional versions of the standard First Order Stochastic Dominance and Concavity/Convexity of the Distribution Function...

How should a principal delegate a task to an agent? This paper studies the principal's choice of an agent's freedom of action as an incentive problem. The optimal contract simultaneously copes with two problems of asymmetric information: the agent must be motivated to acquire productive...

We study a procurement problem where the distribution of types is determined by a productive, yet unobservable, prior effort of the agent. Productivity enhancing investments and learning are discussed as canonical examples. Our analysis explains unusually high levels of production for the most...

I study the optimal regulation of a firm producing two goods. The firm has private information about its cost of producing either of the goods. I explore the ways in which the optimal allocation differs from its one dimensional counterpart. With binding constraints in both dimensions, the...