We develop a theory of contracts with competing agencies under symmetric information and under moral hazard. In contrast to much of the literature, we allow the agencies to choose from a general contract space. Under the assumption of supermodularity, we show that in both cases the equilibria in...

This Paper considers why a manager would choose to submit himself to the discipline of bank monitoring. This issue is analysed within the context of a model where the manager enjoys private benefits, which can be restricted by the monitor, and is optimally compensated by shareholders. Within...

One of the most crucial lessons to be taken from the literature on electoral business cycles is that the short-run electorally-induced fluctuations prejudice the long-run welfare. Since the very first studies on the matter, some authors offered suggestions as to what should be done against this...

This paper provides a general methodology for introducing capital accumulation into economies with private information and heterogeneous agents. The agents operate a stochastic neoclassical production technology with capital and labor input. I study a moral hazard economy with unobservable input...

We study the problem of optimal contract design in an environment with an uninformed decision maker and two perfectly informed experts. We characterize optimal contracts and observe that consulting two experts rather than one is always beneficial; this is so even if the bias of a second expert...

I present a model of optimal contracts between firms and workers, under limited commitment and with worker savings. A central feature of the model is that firms can provide insurance against unemployment, by targeting a path of wages that encourages wealth accumulation. I provide an analytical...

We study the joint determination of fund managers' contracts and equilibrium asset prices. Because of agency frictions, investors make managers' fees more sensitive to performance and benchmark performance against a market index. This makes managers unwilling to deviate from the index and...

The financial crisis has been attributed partly to perverse incentives for traders at banks and has led policy makers to propose regulation of banks' remuneration packages. We explain why poor incentives for traders cannot be fully resolved by only regulating the bank's top executives, and why...

This paper derives the optimal lending contract in the financial accelerator model of Bernanke, Gertler and Gilchrist (BGG). The optimal contract includes indexation to the aggregate return on capital, household consumption, and the return to internal funds. This triple indexation results in a...

We look at the implications of uncertain monetary policy preferences for the targeting and contracting approach to monetary stability. It turns out that in presence of uncertain preferences a linear incentive contract in the sense of Walsh (1995) performs better in terms of social welfare than...