In financing start-up firms, venture capitalists carefully select among alternative projects, design incentive compatible financial contracts and support portfolio companies with value enhancing managerial advice. This paper considers how venture capitalists can induce self-selection among...

In financing start-up firms, venture capitalists carefully select among alternative projects, design incentive compatible financial contracts and support portfolio companies with value enhancing managerial advice. This paper considers how venture capitalists can induce self-selection among...

This paper proposes a simple partial equilibrium model to investigate the effects of government policy on venture capital backed investments. Giving up an alternative career, entrepreneurs focus their effort on a single, high risk venture each. Venture capitalists acquire an equity stake and...

This paper proposes a simple partial equilibrium model to investigate the effects of government policy on venture capital backed investments. Giving up an alternative career, entrepreneurs focus their effort on a single, high risk venture each. Venture capitalists acquire an equity stake and...

The paper studies the effects of tax policy on venture capital activity. Entrepreneurs pursue a single high risk project each but have no own resources. Financiers provide equity finance. They must structure the entrepreneur's profit share and base salary to assure their incentives for full...

In this paper, we ask under what conditions norms can enhance welfare by mitigating moral hazard in income insurance. We point out a particular role of norms, namely to compensate for insurers' difficulties in monitoring the behavior of insured individuals. Thus, the functioning of social norms...

This discussion paper has led to a publication in the <A href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272710000721">'Journal of Public Economics'</A>. The quality of public management is a recurrent concern in many countries. Calls to attract the economy's best and brightest managers to the public sector abound. This paper studies self-selection into...</a>

College education is not only an investment; for many people it also generates consumption benefits. If these benefits are normal goods, then the rich attend college at higher rates than the poor. Furthermore, the marginal poor student is smarter than the marginal rich student. Colleges aiming...

Inspired by a recent observation about an online retail company, this paper explains why a firm may find it optimal to offer an exit bonus to recent hires so as to induce self-selection. We study a double adverse selection problem, in which the principal can neither observe agents’ commitment...

We develop a model where people differ in their altruistic preferences and can serve the public interest in two ways: by making donations to charity and by taking a public service job and exerting effort on the job. Our theory predicts that people who are more altruistic are more likely to take...