This paper studies the optimal disclosure of information about an agent's talent when it consists of two components. The agent observes the first component of his talent as his private type, and reports it to a principal to perform a task which reveals the second component of his talent. Based...

Adverse selection harms workers, but benefits firms able to identify talent. An informed intermediary expropriates its agents' ability by threatening to fire and expose them to undervaluation of their skill. Agents' track record gradually reduces the intermediary's information advantage. We show...

We examine a dynamic model of voluntary disclosure of multiple pieces of private information. In our model, a manager of a firm who may learn multiple signals over time interacts with a competitive capital market and maximizes payoffs that increase in both period prices. We show (perhaps...

We examine if managerial ability affects the efficiency of the contracting environment with lenders. We find that higher ability alters the balance of information-sensitive covenants demanded by outside investors, increases the issuance of bonds with longer maturity, and decreases the issuance...

A defining feature of initial coin offerings (ICOs) is that entrepreneurs bear the full marginal investment cost but profit only partially from the marginal investment payoff. This design may exacerbate agency conflicts inherent in corporate finance. As a consequence, signals of entrepreneurial...

We develop a model of consulting (advising) where the role of the consultant is that she can reveal signals to her client which refine the client’s original private estimate of the profitability of a project. Importantly, only the client can observe or evaluate these signals, the consultant...

I analyze common agency games in which the principals, and possibly the agent, have private information. I distinguish between games in which the principals delegate the final decisions to the agent, and games in which they retain some decision power after offering their mechanisms. I show that,...

The paper formalizes Warner's (1965) randomized response technique (RRT) as a game and implements it experimentally, thus linking game theoretic approaches to randomness in communication with survey practice in the field and a novel implementation in the lab. As predicted by our model and in...