We consider a principal-agent model in which the agent may acquire costly infor-mation about his e¤ort costs before he accepts a contract. The model departs from the literature in two ways: (1) the information is 'hard' in the sense that it can be credibly communicated, and (2) the parties are...

Models with imperfect information that generate persistent monetary nonneutrality predominantly rely on assumptions leading to substantial heterogeneity of information across price-setters. This paper develops a quantitative general equilibrium model in which the degree of heterogeneity of...

Trends in arts and culture tend to be longer-lasting and less fragile than in other fields such as clothing design. Most herding models are not able to explain such stability, instead predicting informational cascades to be fragile and fads to be frequent. The present contribution is able to...

We present a model of job search in which information about job opportunities is available either through direct search at the labor market or through network of socially tied individuals. We consider two cases - altruistic and self-interested agents that maximize their utility function. We show...

It is shown that a fixed cost of nominal price changes enhances the ability of firms to collude in an ologopolistic market for a homogeneous good. Nevertheless, harsh price competition with firms making no profit remains a possible outcome. The analysis focuses on stable symmetric steady states...

This paper attempts to identify, in a framework deliberately stripped of unnecessary technicalities, some of the basic reasons why adaptive learning may or may not lead to stability and convergence to self-fulfilling expectations in large socioeconomic systems where no agent, or collection of...

A growing literature has brought to our attention the importance of information transmission and aggregation for economic and political behavior. Many recent studies of cascades point to the possibility of information cascades in economies with local learning and information transmission....

We survey modern models of delegation which assume that a boss and subordinate pursue their own goals. Among the major themes covered are thefolling: the conditions under which the boss will prefer to delegate versus those in which she will prefer to retain authority; the ways in which a boss...

If worker performance is observable and contractible without cost, then why do we observe "Spencian", unproductive, education? We provide the following explanation. Say that the economy consists of several different sectors, and that agents are uncertain which of these sectors they are best fit...

Through a learning-by-doing process, a firm's efficiency depends positively on the extent of its previous business activity. From a dynamic incentives perspective, therefore, efficiency is endogenous. In addition, the efficiency of the firm is likely to be subject to private information. The...