This paper addresses the question of how the principal's surplus and agency costs depend on the agent's wealth. Our main results are: If the agent has an additively separable utility function in income and effort and his degree of absolute prudence is smaller than three times the agent's degree...

This paper addresses the question of how the principal's surplus and agency costs depend on the agent's wealth. Using the first-order approach, we identify properties of the agent's utility function which are sufficient conditions to guarantee that richer agents induce a lower expected surplus...

During the recent sales of UMTS licenses in Europe some countries used auctions while others resorted to so-called Beauty Contests. There seems to be a wide consensus among economists that in these and other contexts like privatisation an auction is the better selling mechanism. However, why...

Der Blick auf eine angemessene Wettbewerbsordnung hat sich im Laufe der Jahrzehnte vielfach gewandelt. Dazu trugen sowohl der technologische Wandel als auch ein tieferes Verständnis der ökonomischen Zusammenhänge bei. Aktuell muss die Wettbewerbspolitik das Gesetz gegen...