We consider a bandit problem faced by a team of two heterogeneous players. The team is hierarchical in that one (the principal) retains the exclusive right to terminate the project while the other (the agent) focuses strictly on implementing the project assigned to him. As a key departure, we...

Many economic organizations have some relational structure, meaning that economic agents do not only differ with respect to certain individual characteristics such as wealth and preferences, but also belong to some relational structure in which they usually take different positions. Two examples...

A hierarchically structured rent-seeking contest may be associated with lower equilibrium expenditure than a corresponding flat contest. In this chapter we discuss how this fact may be used to explain the structure of organizations such as firms, including why firms commonly have outside owners.