This paper studies how a person's concern for a future career may influence his or her incentives to put in effort or make decisions on the job. In the model, the person's productive abilities are revealed over time through observations of performance. There are no explicit output-contingent...

A model of optimal contracts between two infinitely-lived parties, a borrower and lender, is presented and analyzed. The objective is to explain the phenomenon of finite-length, multi-period contracts. It is shown how costly information acquisition can account for multi- period contracts which...

The role of imperfect information in a principal-agent relationship subject to moral hazard is considered. A necessary and sufficient condition for imperfect information to improve on contracts based on the payoff alone is derived, and a characterization of the optimal use of such information is...

Largely as a result of failures at Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, and other prominent American companies, U.S. corporate governance practices have come under attack. These much publicized failures and the resulting popular outcry have served as catalysts for legislative and regulatory changes that...