Economic theorists have devoted considerable attention to analyzing models of closely related incentive contracting problems that arise in the study of public procurement, private procurement, regulation, the theory of the firm, the theory of organizations, and managerial compensation. The...

This paper compares alternative liability rules for allocating losses from defective products when consumers under- estimate these losses and producers may have some market power. If producers do not have any market power, the rule of strict liability .leads to both the first-best accident...

The theory of rent-seeking is that monopoly profits attract resources directed into efforts to obtain these profits and that the opportunity costs of these resources are a social cost of monopoly. This article shows that monopoly rents remain untransformed to the extent that firms are...

Economic theorists have devoted considerable attention to analyzing models of closely related incentive contracting problems that arise in the study of public procurement, private procurement, regulation, the theory of the firm, the theory of organizations, and managerial compensation. The...

This article considers the role that reputation plays in assuring product quality in markets where consumers can only imperfectly judge product quality even after consumption. Three conclusions are derived. First, high quality firms have more customers because they have fewer dissatisfied...

The federal government has been the most important source of funds for academic research since the 1950s. Nearly a third of this support takes the form of indirect cost recovery (overhead). Long a source of conflict between universities and the government, in recent years the indirect cost...