We analyse a simple model of dynamic moral hazard in which there is a clear and tractable trade-off between static and dynamic incentives. In our model, a principal wants an agent to complete a project. The agent undertakes unobservable effort, which affects in each period the probability that...

We analyse a simple model of dynamic moral hazard in which there is a clear and tractable trade-off; between static and dynamic incentives. In our model, a principal wants an agent to complete a project. The agent undertakes unobservable effort, which affects in each period the probability that...

This paper investigates how a buyer and a seller exchanging two goods should write the contract, where the seller makes sequences of unobservable relation-specific investments and the buyer privately learns valuations for goods which are stochastically influenced by the investments and these two...

This paper studies repeated moral hazard in teams. Agents' actions are observable to each other but not to the principal. For any given dynamic contract, agents always select their favorite subgame perfect equilibrium in the corresponding dynamic game. The optimal dynamic contract must take that...

I construct an equilibrium model of the labor market where workers and firms enter into dyamic contracts that can potentially last forever, but are subject to optimal terminations.  Upon a termination, the firm hires a new worker, and the worker who is terminated receives a termination...

An advocate for a special interest provides information to an uninformed planner for her to consider in making a sequence of important decisions. Although the advocate may have valuable information for the planner, it is is also known that the advocate is biased and will distort her advice if...

We study the agency problem between a firm and its research employees. In a multi-agent contracting setting, we show explicitly the way in which the optimal incentive regime is a function of how agents' efforts interact with one another: relative-performance evaluation is used when their efforts...

This paper establishes a non-stochastic analog of the celebrated result by Dubins and Schwarz about reduction of continuous martingales to Brownian motion via time change. We consider an idealized financial security with continuous price paths, without making any stochastic assumptions. It is...

We study a continuous-time principal-agent model in which a risk-neutral agent with limited liability must exert unobservable effort to reduce the likelihood of large but relatively infrequent losses. Firm size can be decreased at no cost or increased subject to adjustment costs. In the optimal...

A symmetric Poissonian two-armed bandit becomes, in terms of a posteriori probabilities, a piecewise deterministic Markov decision process. For the case of the switching arms, only of one which creates rewards, we solve explicitly the average optimality equation and prove that a myopic policy is...