We consider a general information design problem in which the task of running a procedure generating information for a continuation game is performed by an agent. A moral hazard roblem therefore emerges in which the principal faces a trade-off between generating information with an eye to the...

This paper shows that a transaction tax makes trades in decentralized markets more information sensitive and enlarges the range of information costs for which the equilibrium exhibits private information acquisition and endogenous adverse selection. A transaction tax reduces the probability of...

We study the optimality of debt through the interaction between security design and information acquisition. An impatient seller designs a security backed by her asset in place and a buyer decides whether to buy the security in order to provide liquidity. Facing different securities, the buyer...

We study the design of contracts that incentivize experts to collect information and truthfully report it to a decision maker. We depart from most of the previous literature by assuming that the transfers cannot depend on the realized state or on the ex post payoff of the decision maker. The...

Risk-neutral individuals take more risky decisions when they have limited liability. Risk-neutral managers may not when acting as agents under contract and taking costly actions to acquire information before taking decisions. Limited liability makes it optimal to increase the reward for outcomes...

In Spence's (1973) signaling by education model and in many of its extensions, firms can only infer workers' productivities from their education choices. In reality, firms also use sophisticated pre-employment auditing to learn workers' productivities. We characterize the trade-offs between...

In Spence's (1973) signaling by education model and in many of its extensions, firms can only infer workers' productivities from their education choices. In reality, firms also use sophisticated pre-employment auditing to learn workers' productivities. We characterize the trade-offs between...

We study a principal-agent model in which the principal has a production technology. The efficiency parameter of the principal's technology is not known to the agent. Alternatively, the principal can make the agent use a technology from a different channel. By gathering information at a cost,...

We formalize a decentralized market where consumers with privately-known preferences meet bilaterally with firms. The latter acquire information to raise their degree of price discrimination from second to first. In a dynamic setting where outside options are endogenous, information choices are...

We demonstrate that a candidate competing in an asymmetric Tullock election contest may prefer that their rival candidate has access to information they themselves do not have. In the model, the extent of asymmetry between the candidates is ex-ante uncertain, but candidates can acquire...