Time-inconsistent, present-biased agents may hold commitment assets hoping to keep their current and future present bias in check. Paternalistic governments, in an effort to help such people, routinely offer commitment machinery such as restrictions (or bans) on early withdrawals from...

High unemployment and its social and economic consequences have lent urgency to the question of how to improve unemployment insurance in bad times without jeopardizing incentives to work or public finances in the medium term. A possible solution is a rule-based system that improves the...

The incentive to call for contract renewal to adjust prices is considered from a bilateral perspective in a setting where changes in outside opportunities drive the incentive to renew contracts and costs preclude continuous renewal. A model encompassing several contract forms is formulated, and...