distinguish between an inspection that doesn't find evidence of misrepresented information and an inspection that just hasn't been …

Asymmetric information is widely supposed to impair the functioning of markets. We show that the presence of … privately observed, provided that principals do not directly care about the agents' private information (the private value case …). Thus hidden information only matters in competitive markets if it affects common values. …

to better understand the comparative advantages of accounting as a source of information. …

In a principal-agent environment with moral hazard and symmetric information, having or acquiring a more informative …. We show that when the principal has or will acquire private information about her technology, (i) with ex post … contracting, the value of information for the principal may be negative; and (ii) although the agent prefers that the principal …

information), informative and observed only by the principal (private information), or also observed by the agent (public … information). We show that, from an ex ante standpoint (before the signal is observed): (i) the agent prefers private to both null … and public information; (ii) the principal sometimes prefers null to both private and public information; and (iii) when …