We consider a principal — agent model in which a principal delegates monitoring of cheating individuals to an agent. The principal can observe only the number of detection, not how many cheaters are deterred by the actions of the monitor. We show that conviction numbers should not be used for...

We consider an incomplete contracting model in which the decision process consists of the project choice and execution effort. Each party has an imperfectly informative private signal on the promising project and successful execution requires the agent's effort. Revelation of the principal's...

Representative democracy consists of a chain of delegation from voters to the executive and a corresponding chain of accountability, with some questions (particularly constitutional questions) reserved for popular vote. This structure reflects the high transaction costs of coordinating...

We study a delegation problem within a Bayesian persuasion framework with the aim of understanding the incentive design of representatives. We are doing so by adding a preplay stage to the standard Bayesian persuasion model in which the receiver is allowed to choose a representative in order to...

In an ongoing relationship of delegated decision making, a principal consults a biased agent to assess projects' returns. In equilibrium, the principal allows future bad projects to reward fiscal restraint, but cannot commit to indefinite rewards. We characterize equilibrium payoffs (at fixed...

We study how competition in nonlinear pricing between two principals (sellers) affects market participation by a privately-informed agent (consumer). When participation is restricted to all-or-nothing ("intrinsic" agency), the agent must choose between both principals' contracts and selecting...

There are two common ways for a principal to influence the decision making of an agent. One is to manipulate the agent's information (persuasion problem). Another is to limit the agent's decisions (delegation problem). We show that, under general assumptions, these two problems are equivalent;...