We consider a common agency context where socially desired exclusive dealing clauses cannot be enforced. Customers sequentially negotiate nonexclusive credit or insurance contracts from multiple risk-neutral firms in a market with free entry. Each contract is subject to moral hazard arising from...

We analyze the effects of a "winner-take-all" patent mechanism on the riskiness of the research strategies chosen by competing firms, as well as on the firms' incentives to duplicate research projects. Nash equilibrium choices are compared with the social optimum in a one-shot, simultaneous-move...

Agents in a hierarchy are commonly delegated authority to communicate and contract with agents at lower levels. While delegation reduces the burden of communication and information processing on the principal, it also introduces additional incentive problems. We find that with sufficient...

A common presumption is that decentralization is prone to a potential pitfall owing to the greater vulnerability of local governments to capture by local elites. We investigate the determinants of relative capture of local and national governments theoretically, in the context of an extended...

We examine the role of delivery of subsidized seeds and fertilizers in the form of agricultural minikits by local governments in three successive farm panels in West Bengal spanning 1982-1995. These programs significantly raised farm value added per acre, accounting for almost two-thirds of the...