Nach einer Serie von Lebensmittelskandalen ist das Vertrauen der Verbraucher in die Industrie erschüttert. Kritik schlägt dabei nicht nur den Herstellern selbst, sondern auch den Anbietern von Gütesiegeln entgegen, die Produkte leichtfertig zertifiziert haben. Die Rufe nach gesteigerter...

In this paper, I study the dynamic delegation problem in a principal-agent model wherein an agent privately observes a persistently evolving state, and the principal commits to actions based on the agent's reported state. There are no transfers. While the agent has state-independent preferences,...

This paper analyzes a common-value, first-price auction with state-dependent participation. The number of bidders, which is unobservable to them, depends on the true value. For participation patterns with many bidders in each state, the bidding equilibrium may be of a "pooling" type---with high...

We study contracting when both principal and agent have to exert noncontractible effort for production to take place. An analyst is uncertain about what actions are available and evaluates a contract by the expected payoffs it guarantees to each party in spite of the surrounding uncertainty....

Die Repräsentation von Verbraucherinteressen in Deutschland weist eine unzureichende Beteiligung der Verbraucher auf. Gleichzeitig wird die Informationsfunktion von Repräsentanten im politischen Entscheidungsprozess zu wenig genutzt. Die daraus resultierenden Legitimationsprobleme der...

Der Markt für Riester-Produkte ist intransparent. In diesem Artikel wird gezeigt, warum die Informationsasymmetrien zu Lasten der Verbraucher nicht durch den Markt aufgelöst werden können, sondern nur durch staatliche Vorgaben. Eine empirische Erhebung verdeutlicht, dass auch die...

We consider consumer entry in the canonical monopolistic nonlinear pricing model ( Mussa and Rosen 1978) wherein consumers learn their preference 'types' after incurring privately known entry costs. We show that by taking into account consumer entry, the nature of optimal nonlinear pricing...

This paper examines the interplay between career concerns and market structure. Ability and effort are complements: effort increases the probability that a skilled agent achieves a one-time breakthrough. Wages are based on assessed ability and on expected output. Effort levels at different times...

We address empirically the issues of the optimality of simple linear compensation contracts and the importance of asymmetries between firms and workers. For that purpose, we consider contracts between the French National Institute of Statistics and Economics (Insee) and the interviewers it hired...

We study intermediaries who seek to maximize gains from trade in bilateral negotiations. Intermediaries are players: they cannot commit to act against their objective function and deny, in some cases, trade they believe to be beneficial. This impairs their ability to assist the parties relative...