This paper considers dynamic games in which multiple principals contract sequentially and non-cooperatively with the same agent. We …first show that when contracting is private, i.e. when downstream principals observe neither the mechanisms offered upstream nor the decisions taken in these...

We characterize a firm's profit-maximizing turnover policy in an environment where managerial productivity changes stochastically over time and is the manager's private information. Our key positive result shows that the productivity level that the …firm requires for retention declines with the...

I study the properties of optimal long-term contracts in an environment in which the agent’s type evolves stochastically over time. The model stylizes a buyer-seller relationship but the results apply quite naturally to many contractual situations including regulation and optimal...

These notes examine the problem of how to extend envelope theorems to infinite-horizon dynamic mechanism design settings, with an application to the design of "bandit auctions."

Uniform-price auctions of a divisible good in fixed supply admit underpricing equilibria, where bidders submit high inframarginal bids to prevent competition on prices. The seller can obstruct this behavior by tilting her supply schedule and making the amount of divisible good on offer change...

We examine the design of incentive-compatible screening mechanisms for dynamic environments in which the agents types follow a (possibly non-Markov) stochastic process, decisions may be made over time and may affect the type process, and payoffs need not be time-separable. We derive a formula...

We characterize the optimal incentive scheme for a manager who faces costly effort decisions and whose ability to generate profits for the firm varies stochastically over time. The optimal contract is obtained as the solution to a dynamic mechanism design problem with hidden actions and...

We illustrate, by means of two examples, why assuming the principals offer simple menus (i.e. collections of payoff-relevant alternatives) as opposed to more general mechanisms may preclude a complete characterization of the set of equilibrium outcomes in certain sequential contracting...

These notes examine the problem of how to extend envelope theorems to infinite-horizon dynamic mechanism design settings, with an application to the design of "bandit auctions."

This paper considers dynamic games in which multiple principals contract sequentially and non-cooperatively with the same agent and provides characterization results useful for applications. Our benchmark model is one of private contracting in which downstream principals do not observe upstream...