We conduct a laboratory experiment with agents working on and principals benefitting from a real effort task in which the agents' performance can only be evaluated subjectively. Principals give subjective performance feedback to agents and agents have an opportunity to sanction principals. In...

We introduce intention-based social preferences into a Bayesian mechanism design framework. We first show that, under common knowledge of social preferences, any tension between material efficiency, incentive compatibility, and voluntary participation can be resolved. Hence, famous impossibility...

When agents anticipate that a future shock could start a crisis, they may take preemptive actions that contribute to the crisis. This can create panic — a crisis even when the fundamental does not warrant it. We construct an optimal dynamic information disclosure policy called “timely...

In recent years, the designs of many new blockchain applications have been inspired by the Byzantine fault tolerance (BFT) problem. While traditional BFT protocols assume that most system nodes are honest (in that they follow the protocol), we recognize that blockchains are deployed in...

We analyze the consequences of activism in a regulated industry where the regulator has been captured by the industry. Unlike ordinary economic agents, activists are insensitive to monetary incentives. Moreover, they are less well informed than regulators and their actions generate dead-weight...

This thesis develops a new institutional economics of identity. It develops a clear and consistent economic definition of identity, and demonstrates the ways identity overcomes information problems in economic and political exchange. The first contribution of this thesis is a clear and...

Cooperation can be achieved via incentives from future interactions, specifically in the case of public monitoring. But, today, our social and professional spheres keep shifting rapidly and we interact often with strangers. We are interested in such sporadic interactions which can be modeled as...

We consider the design of contests for n agents when the principal can choose both the prize profile and the contest success function. Our framework includes Tullock contests, Lazear-Rosen tournaments and all-pay contests as special cases, among others. We show that the optimal contest has an...

We study optimal incentive contracts with multiple agents when performance is evaluated by a reviewer. The reviewer may be biased in favor of the agents, but the degree of bias is unknown to the principal. We show that a contest, which is a contract in which the principal fixes a set of prizes...

This paper analyzes how moral costs affect individual support of morally difficult group decisions. We study a threshold public good game with moral costs. Motivated by recent empirical findings, we assume that these costs are heterogeneous and consist of three parts. The first one is a standard...