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...

How does renegotiation affect contracts between a principal and an agent subject to persistent private information and moral hazard? This paper introduces a concept of renegotiationproofness, which adapts to stochastic games the concepts of weak renegotiation-proofness and internal consistency...

How does renegotiation affect contracts between a principal and an agent subject to persistent private information and moral hazard? This paper introduces a concept of renegotiation-proofness, which adapts to stochastic games the concepts of weak renegotiation-proofness and internal consistency...

This paper investigates relational incentive contracts with continuous, privately-observed agent types that are persistent over time. With fixed agent types, full separation is not possible when continuation equilibrium payoffs following revelation are on the Pareto frontier of attainable...

We study a model of adverse selection, hard and soft information, and mentalizing ability-the human capacity to represent others' intentions, knowledge, and beliefs. By allowing for a continuous range of different information types, as well as for different means of acquiring information, we...

The marginal cost of effort often increases as effort is exerted. In a dynamic moral hazard setting, dynamically increasing costs create information asymmetry. This paper characterizes the optimal contract and helps explain the popular yet thus far puzzling use of non-linear incentives, for...

I present a model in which a principal selects one among many agents to develop a project and influences the agent's ex post level of effort not by outcome-contingent rewards, but by the choice of the project's mission. The closer the project's mission to the agent's preferred mission, the...

This paper studies how private information in hedging outcomes affects the design of managerial compensation when hedging instruments serve as a double-edged sword in that they may be used for both corporate hedging and earnings management. On the one hand, financial vehicles can offer...

I analyze a model in which a principal offers a contract to an agent and can influence the agent’s marginal return of effort by the choice of the project mission. The principal's and the agents' mission preferences are misaligned, and the agents have unobservable intrinsic motivation levels. I...

We introduce ex post participation constraints in the standard sequential screening model. This captures the presence of consumer withdrawal rights as, for instance, mandated by EU regulation of "distance sales contracts". With such additional constraints, the optimal contract is static and,...