We introduce a model of the admissions process based upon standard agency theory and explore its implications with economics PhD admissions data from 2013-2019. We show that a subjective score that aggregates subjective ratings and recommendation letter features plays a more important role in...

"Implicit Contracts, incentive compatibility, and involuntary unemployment" (MacLeod and Malcomson, 1989) remains our most highly cited work. We briefly review the development of this paper and of our subsequent related work, and conclude with reflections on the future of relational contract...

This paper was written as an editorial preface to a "Symposium on Relational Contracts", that was jointly edited by the three authors, and that will appear in the Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE). The Symposium contains eleven contributions to the economics of relational...