We investigate the terms of exchange between the legislative branch of the government and an administrative bureau with standard operating procedures. An administrative bureau is a not-for-profit public organisation responsible for the production of a non-marketable good. Such a bureau is...

Should principals explain and justify their evaluations? In this paper the principal's evaluation is private information, but she can provide justification by sending a costly cheap-talk message. I show that the principal explains her evaluation to the agent if the evaluation turns out to be...

We focus on the role that the transmission of information between a multilateral (e.g., the IMF) and a country has for optimal (conditional) reform design. The main result is that the informational advantage of the country must be strictly greater than the advantage of the multilateral in order...

The paper offers a new explanation for the widely observed use of redeemable and convertible preferred stock in venture capital finance. Redeemable and convertible preferred stocks can be used to endogenously allocate cash flow and control rights as a function of the state of nature, the...

In this paper we allude to a novel role played by the non-linear income tax system in the presence of adverse selection in the labor market due to asymmetric information between workers and firms. We show that an appropriate choice of the tax schedule enables the government to affect the wage...

The value of information regarding risk class for a monopoly insurer and its customers is examined in both symmetric and asymmetric information environments. A monopolist always prefers contracting with uninformed customers as this maximizes the rent extracted under symmetric information while...

We study an insurance model characterized by a continuum of risk types, private information and a competitive supply side. We use the model to investigate the welfare effects of discrimination (also known as risk selection). We postulate that a test is available that determines whether an...

This paper investigates the effect of adverse selection on the private annuity market in a model with two periods of retirement and two types of individuals, who differ in their life expectancy. In order to introduce the existence of limited-time pension insurance, we consider a model where for...

In a two-period model with uncertainty about life expectancy, we analyze several measures which are typically included in a social security reform: tax incentives for private life annuities, a cut in the social security benefits and an increase in the social security tax. First, we look at the...