[eng] This paper tries to reconcile incentive theory with transaction costs theory. We first discuss the fundamental assumptions underlying the use of the Revelation Principle in the standard mechanism design literature and show how various contractual incompletenesses and externalities induced...

[fre] La plupart des pays développés ont connu, au cours de ces quinze dernières années, une baisse significative de la part du secteur public dans l'économie. Nous faisons ici le point des enseignements de la théorie économique sur les rôles respectifs des secteurs publics et privés...

We explore the strategic value of quantity forcing contracts in a manufacturer-retailer environment under both adverse selection and moral hazard. Manufacturers dealing with (exclusive) competing retailers may prefer to leave contracts silent on retail prices, whenever other aspects of the...

The renegotiation of contracts in the French urban transport industry. This paper describes the renegotiation of delegated management contracts in the French urban transport. We briefly describe the sector, sketch a theoretical model showing that contract renegotiation explains an increasing...

This paper offers some results on the comparison of the costs and benefits associated to the Public-Private Partnerships and to the traditional mode of public contracting. We conclude by explorng the limits of the model. Classification JEL : H11

We propose a theory of supervision with endogenous transaction costs. A principal delegates part of his authority to a supervisor who can acquire soft information about an agent's productivity. If the supervisor were risk-neutral, the principal would simply make the better informed supervisor...

We analyze licensing contracts between informed innovators and developers exerting profit-increasing effort. Those contracts must simultaneously induce innovators to convey information on the value of their ideas, while inducing developers to exert effort and protecting the innovators'...

The renegotiation of regulatory contracts is known to prevent regulators from achieving the full commitment efficient outcome in dynamic contexts. However, assessing the cost of such renegotiation remains an open issue from an empirical viewpoint. To address this question, we fit a structural...

A firm engaged in activities which are environmentally risky has private informationboth on her choice of safety care and on the level of her assets. Public authorities havea stake in implementing a high level of prevention effort and in unveiling the true levelof assets for liability payments....

This article takes stock of the many contributions of Jean-Jacques Laffont to the theory of group incentives. We illustrate advances of the paradigm through examples drawn from the theory of public goods, the theory of hierarchies, and the theory of regulation.