We study optimal contracting by a monopolistic seller of an investment good to a time-inconsistent consumer and, in doing so, introduce asymmetric information to the model of DellaVigna and Malmendier (2004). We find: (1) the below-marginal-cost-pricing rule may fail for a low-value consumer;...

In this paper I analyze the effects of innovations in information technology on the mortgage and housing markets using a life-cycle model with incomplete markets and idiosyncratic income, as well as moving and house price shocks. I explicitly model the housing tenure choices of households....

The paper studies procurement contracts with pre-project investigations in the presence of adverse selection and moral hazard. To model the procurer's roblem, we extend a standard sequential screening model to endogenous information acquisition with moral hazard. The optimal contract displays...

The marginal cost of effort often increases as effort is exerted. In a dynamic moral hazard setting, dynamically increasing costs create information asymmetry. This paper characterizes the optimal contract and helps explain the popular yet thus far puzzling use of non-linear incentives, for...

The paper extends the optimal delegation framework pioneered by Holmström (1977, 1984) to a dynamic environment where, at the outset, the agent privately knows his ability to interpret decision relevant private information received later on. We show that any mechanism can be implemented by a...

We introduce ex post participation constraints in the standard sequential screening model. This captures the presence of consumer withdrawal rights as, for instance, mandated by EU regulation of "distance sales contracts". With such additional constraints, the optimal contract is static and,...

We analyze the extent to which efficient trade is possible in an ongoing relationship between impatient agents with hidden valuations (i.i.d. over time), restricting attention to equilibria that satisfy ex post incentive constraints in each period. With ex ante budget balance, efficient trade...

This paper analyzes the optimal provision of incentives in a dynamic information acquisition process. In every period, the agent can acquire costly information that is relevant to the principal's decision. Each signal may or may not provide definitive evidence in favor of the good state. Neither...

We study full surplus extraction and implementation in dynamic environments. We exploit intertemporal correlations of agents' types to construct within-period ex post incentive compatible mechanisms. First, we formulate one-shot environments, in which a single agent has a hidden type and the...