Consider two parties who can make non-contractible investments in the provision of a public good. Who should own the physical assets needed to provide the public good? In the literature it has been argued that the party who values the public good most should be the owner, regardless of the...

We study contracting between a public good provider and users with private valuations of the good. We show that, once the provider extracts the users' private information, she benefits from manipulating the collective information received from all users when communicating with them. We derive...

We examine the optimal financing of infrastructure when governments have limited financial commitment and can expropriate rents from private sector firms that manage infrastructure. While private firms need incentives to implement projects well, governments need incentives to limit...

The provision of public goods under asymmetric information has most often been viewed as a mechanism design problem under the aegis of an uninformed mediator. This paper focuses on institutional contexts without such mediator. Contributors privately informed on their willingness to pay...

In a public procurement setting, we discuss the desirability of completing contracts with state-contingent clauses providing for monetary compensations to the contractor when revenue shocks occur. Realized shocks are private information of the contractor and this creates agency costs of...

In a public procurement setting, we discuss the desirability of completing contracts with state-contingent clauses providing for monetary compensations to the contractor when revenue shocks occur. Realized shocks are private information of the contractor and this creates agency costs of...

Litigation seems to be a Pareto-ineffcient outcome of pretrial bargaining; however, this paper shows that litigation can be the outcome of rational behavior by a litigant and her attorney. If the attorney has more information than his client concerning the characteristics of the lawsuit, the...

We develop a dynamic model of debt contracts with adverse selection and belief updates. In the model, entrepreneurs borrow investment goods from lenders to run businesses whose returns depend on entrepreneurial productivity and common productivity. Entrepreneurial productivity is the...