We study the quantitative properties of constrained efficient allocations in an environment where risk sharing is limited by the presence of private information. We consider a life cycle version of a standard Mirrlees economy where shocks to labor productivity have a component that is public...

This paper studies the Rothschild and Stiglitz (1976) adverse selection environment, relaxing the assumption of exclusivity of insurance contracts. Agents can engage in multiple insurance contracts simultaneously, and the terms of these contracts are not observed by other firms. Insurance...

We study how the presence of non-exclusive contracts limits the amount of insurance provided in a decentralized economy. We consider a dynamic Mirrleesian economy in which agents are privately informed about idiosyncratic labor productivity shocks. Agents sign privately observable insurance...

UNiversity of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. July 2009. Major: Economics. Advisors: Larry E. Jones, Patrick J. Kehoe. 1 computer file (PDF) ix, 168 pages, appendix: pages 155-159

This paper characterizes the efficient sequential equilibrium when a government uses indirect control to exert its authority. We develop a dynamic principal-agent model in which a principal (a government) delegates the prevention of a disturbance—such as riots, protests, terrorism, crime, or...

We revisit and critically reevaluate the widely accepted modernization hypothesis which claims that per capita income causes the creation and the consolidation of democracy. Existing studies find support for this hypothesis because they fail to control for the presence of omitted variables....