The fiduciary norm, which prescribes agent behavior solely for the goal of the principal, without regard for other goals, is defined in the context of the theory of agency. The fiduciary program, a set of procedures for determining the principal's preferences and acting for them, is then defined...

We formulate and solve the problem of optimal mechanism-design by a principal facing adverse selection and moral hazard from different sources. The parties' decision problem is comprised of a publicly observable collective choice and a partially private social choice. As in agency with pure...

Most major jurisdictions require websites to provide customers with privacy policies. A privacy policy’s most important function is to provide consumers with a description of the online service provider’s current privacy practices. We argue that these policies also serve a second,...

This chapter in the book PIONEERS OF LAW AND ECONOMICS explores the contributions of Benjamin Klein to law and economics. I explore the intellectual foundations of Klein's pioneering analysis of the hold-up problem, the theory of the firm, vertical restraints, franchising, and the role of...

Transactions of any complexity between buyers and sellers are supported by long-term contracts and these contracts are inevitably incomplete. We propose an approach for overcoming contractual incompleteness based on the idea that most people are inclined to follow widely accepted social norms,...

Property rights provide incentives to create information but also incentives to hoard it before award of protection. Even after award, others who might supplement that idea lack bargaining power until they too secure property rights. An unintended consequence is to slow, not hasten, progress...

Written for the Chapman Law Review Symposium on “What Can Law & Economics Teach Us About the Corporate Social Responsibility Debate?,” this Article applies the lessons of public choice theory to examine corporate social responsibility. The Article adopts a broad definition of corporate...

The Encyclical-Letter "Caritas in Veritate" by Pope Benedict XVI suggests to advance towards a new conceptualization of the tenuous relationship between economics and ethics, proposing a “new humanistic synthesis”. Where social encyclicals have traditionally justified policy proposals by...

There exists extensive evidence that people learn positively about themselves. We build on this finding to develop a model of team formation in the workplace. We show that learning positively about oneself systematically undermines the formation of teams. Agents becoming overconfident tend to...

How can office-seeking politicians or managers be aligned with social welfare or firm welfare, given that such agents have a suboptimal incentive to cater to majority preferences in situations with low participation costs and to elite preferences in situations with high participation costs? In...