Equilibrium credit rationing in the sense of Stiglitz and Weiss (1981) implies the marginal cost of funds to the borrower is infinite. So borrowers have an overwhelming incentive to cut their loan by a dollar and thereby avoiding being rationed. Ways of doing this include scaling down the...

Equilibrium credit rationing, in the sense of Stiglitz and Weiss (1981), implies the borrower faces an infinite marginal cost of funds. Infinitessimily delaying the project to accumulate more wealth is therefore advantageous to the borrower. As a result, the well-known conditions for credit...

Compensation schemes often reward success but do not penalize failure. Fixed salaries with stock options or bonuses have this feature. Yet the standard principal–agent model implies that pay is normally monotonically increasing in performance. This paper shows that, under loss aversion, there...

Executive stock options reward success but do not penalise failure. In contrast, the standard principalagent model implies that pay is normally monotonically increasing in performance. This paper shows that, under loss aversion, the use of carrots but not sticks is a feature of an optimal...

This article reverses the standard conclusion that asymmetric information plus competition results in insufficient insurance provision. Risk-tolerant individuals take few precautions and are disinclined to insure, but they are drawn into a pooling equilibrium by the low premiums created by the...