This dissertation considers three topics in professional advising and forecasting. Chapter 1 examines a principal's optimal contracting with experts. In an environment where experts have heterogeneous private signal distributions and type dependent reservation utilities, we show that the...

This dissertation includes two essays on adverse selection and moral hazard problems in reinsurance markets. The first essay builds a competitive principal-agent model that considers adverse selection and moral hazard jointly, and characterizes graphically various forms of separating Nash...

In this paper we critically examine the main workhorse model in asset pricing theory, the Lucas (1978) tree model (LT-Model), extended to include heterogeneous agents and multiple goods, and contrast it to the benchmark model in financial equilibrium theory, the real assets model (RA-Model)....

In economic situations people form expectations prior to their decisions. These expectations represent a reference point and exert a strong influence on decision making and preferences. This paper surveys the theory of reference-dependent preferences. I will summarize the theoretical framework...

Two complementary sources of information are studied in a multiperiod agency model. One is an accounting source which partially but credibly conveys the agent’s private information through accounting recognition. The other is an unverified communication by the agent (i.e., a self-report). In a...

Agency theory is one of the principal frameworks utilized in explaining the family business phenomena. The objectives of this dissertation are to (1) identify the unique agent-principal dynamics that differentiate family firms from non-family firms, (2) determine the effects of these unique...

We suggest in this paper one of the reasons that researchers concur agency costs in family firms are more complex than originally thought maybe related to the lack of conceptual clarity. This, we propose, is because when frameworks and theories are borrowed and enthusiastically embraced without...

We extend agency theory to propose that structural reform positively impacts firm profitability in developing countries because the improvements in external monitoring that accompany structural reform decrease the agency costs faced by firms. However, we also argue that not all firms benefit...