We provide experimental evidence on the ability to detect deceit in a buyer-seller game with asymmetric information. Sellers have private information about the buyer’s valuation of a good and sometimes have incentives to mislead buyers. We examine if buyers can spot deception in face-to-face...

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...

We investigate regulation as the outcome of a bargaining process between a regulator and a regulated firm. The regulator is required to monitor the firm’s costs and reveal its information to a political principal (Congress). In this setting, we explore the scope for collusion between the...

I show that legal uncertainty, i.e., uncertainty about the legality of a specific action, has positive welfare effects. Legal uncertainty works as a screening device provided that the threshold of legality is uncertain. The uncertainty discourages controversial actions, while it encourages...

With rapid technological change has come a blurring of boundaries between personal and workplace space. Employers are challenged to develop guidelines and policies to direct the appropriate use of technology to maintain a civil workplace. Because of the lack of shared understanding, or even...

We study games of public delegated common agency under asymmetric information. Us- ing tools from non-smooth analysis and optimal control, we derive best responses and characterize equilibria (both continuous and discontinuous) using self-generating opti- mization programs of which any...

We model a hierarchy consisting of possibly corrupted agents who process information, and consider the problem of designing the efficient hierarchy structure and configuring the agents who differ in their honesty. If the only role of agents is to report the information to their direct superior,...

Given wide scope for asymmetric information in huge hierarchies agents have a large capacity for opportunistic behaviour. Hidden actions increase transactions costs and cause the demand for monitoring and enforcement. Once the latter are costly, this raises questions about their scope, logistics...

Since 1989 and the regionalization of public transports in Belgium, the Société des transports intercommunaux de Bruxelles (STIB), i.e. the public operator of urban transport in Brussels, has undergone many changes, both structural and organizational. Meanwhile, the company has managed to...

What are the welfare effects of a policy that facilitates for insurance customers to privately and covertly learn about their accident risks? We endogenize the information structure in Stiglitz's classic monopoly insurance model. We first show that his results are robust: For a small information...