Crowdfunding challenges the traditional separation between finance and marketing. It creates economic value by reducing demand uncertainty, which enables a better screening of positive NPV projects. Entrepreneurial moral hazard threatens this effect. Using mechanism design, mechanisms are...

We consider a principal-agent model with moral hazard where the agent’s knowledge about the performance measure is ambiguous and he is averse towards ambiguity. We show that the principal may optimally provide no incentives or contract only on a subset of all informative performance measures....

Crowdfunding provides innovation in enabling entrepreneurs to contract with consumers before investment. Under aggregate demand uncertainty, this improves screening for valuable projects. Entrepreneurial moral hazard and private cost information threatens this benefit. Despite these threats,...

Crowdfunding provides innovation in enabling entrepreneurs to contract with consumers before investment. Under aggregate demand uncertainty, this improves screening for valuable projects. Entrepreneurial moral hazard and private cost information threatens this benefit. Crowdfunding’s...

I analyze a monopolistic model of quality uncertainty but with the possibility of information acquisition on the consumer side. Information is costly and its amount is chosen by the consumer. The analysis of Bayesian equilibria shows the possibility of three equilibrium classes, only one of...

A fundamental result of contest theory is that evenly matched contests are fought most intensely, implying that a contest designer maximizes effort from each contestant by artificially boosting the chances of the underdog. Such "handicapping" is credited with making sports contests more...

Reward-based crowdfunding allows entrepreneurs to sell claims on future products to finance investments and, at the same time, to generate demand information that benefits screening for viable projects. I characterize the profit-maximizing crowdfunding mechanism when the entrepreneur knows...

A principal incentivizes a team of agents to work by privately offering them bonuses contingent on team success. We study the principal's optimal incentive scheme that implements work as a unique equilibrium. This scheme leverages rank uncertainty to address strategic uncertainty. Each agent is...