Regulators and the firms they regulate interact repeatedly. Over the course of these interactions, the regulator collects data that contains information about the firm's id- iosyncratic private characteristics. This paper studies the case in which the regulator uses information gleaned from past...

The dynamics of incentive contracts under asymmetric information have long been an important topic in economics. We address this topic in this paper by considering a stochastic, two-period principal-agent relationship, in which the true state of the world can take on two possible values and is...

We propose a theory to explain the choice between nominal and indexed labor contracts. We find that contracts should be indexed if prices are difficult to forecast and nominal otherwise. Our analysis is based on a principal-agent model developed by Jovanovic and Ueda (1997) in which...

A lift zonoid criterion is proven to be necessary and sufficient for ranking signals in multi-task agency models, and can be applied to a broader set of signals than a multivariate MPS criterion. The two criteria coincide under certain conditions

In a general agency model with a risk-averse principal, we compare signals on two dimensions–their efficiencies at providing incentives for the agent's effort and efficiencies at conveying inference of the outcome. In order to tackle the moral hazard problem, the standard first order approach...

We study, experimentally, how two alternative incentive mechanisms affect team performance, and how a team chooses between alternative mechanisms. We study a group incentive mechanism, where team output is shared equally among team members, and a hierarchical mechanism team output is allocated...

The imperative of the state, irrespective of its organization, is to provide law and order, contract enforcement, and property rights. The government provides the foundation for markets to function and for society to prosper. A common thread in any government is that, for a given society, the...

This paper examines the role of privatization on the cost of government-provided services. We examine data on the cost of housing public and private prisoners from all 50 states over the time period 1996-2004, and find that the existence of private prisons in a state reduces the growth in per...

We introduce a novel framework to study targeted policy interventions. Agents: 1) differ both in their likelihood of and loss from interaction, 2) exert negative externalities through interaction, and 3) can exert costly effort to isolate. Additionally, a planner can select a subset of agents to...

When economic agents decide their optimal environmental behavior, they have to take into account non continuos evolutionary trends and irreversible changes characterising environmental phenomena. Given the still non perfect biophysical and economic knowledge, decisions have to be taken in an...