In this paper we explore the possibility that individuals may select insurance coverage in part based on their anticipated behavioral response to the insurance contract. Such "selection on moral hazard" can have important implications for attempts to combat either selection or moral hazard. We...

Risk classification refers to the use of observable characteristics by insurers to group individuals with similar expected claims, compute the corresponding premiums, and thereby reduce asymmetric information. With perfect risk classification, premiums fully reflect the expected cost associated...

This paper analyzes optimal contracting when an agent has private information before contracting and exerts hidden effort that stochastically affects the output. Additionally, the contract is constrained to satisfy the agentʼs ex post participation. We highlight three features of this model....

Not only does economic theory predict high-risk individuals to be more likely to purchase insurance, but insurance coverage is also thought to crowd out precautionary activities. In spite of stark theoretical predictions, there is conflicting empirical evidence on adverse selection, and evidence...

We analyze venture capital budgeting in a model with agency conflicts among entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and investors. Our three-player setting is crucial for the analysis of compensation to venture capitalists. We focus on the venture capitalist's decision to invest in correlated...

This paper studies a dynamic bargaining model with informational externalities between bargaining pairs. Two principals bargain with their respective agents about the price they will pay for their work while its cost is agents' private information and correlated between them. The principals...

This paper empirically investigates the effect of policyholders’ private information about risky traffic behavior on automobile insurance coverage and ex post risk. It combines insurance company information with the policyholders’ private information on risky traffic behavior (traffic...

We study interventions to restore efficient lending and investment when financial markets fail because of adverse selection. We solve a design problem where the decision to participate in a program offered by the government can be a signal for private information. We charac terize optimal...

For the principal-agent problem with moral hazard and adverse selection we establish that within the collection of all measurable, deterministic contracting mechanisms satisfying the individual rationality and incentive compatibility constraints there exists one that is optimal for a risk averse...

Asymmetric information is widely supposed to impair the functioning of markets. We show that the presence of competition may invalidate this intuition. Consider a market in which principals compete for attracting heterogeneous agents by offering contracts. Suppose contracts are exclusive, and...