A government wants to exploit a renewable resource, yielding a timevarying flow of rent, by leasing it at a fixed rate. Leasing contracts can be expropriated before expiration, albeit at a cost. To minimise transactions costs and avoid the 'resource curse' the government would prefer to enter...

A model of imperfectly competitive banks is examined under asymmetric information about borrower quality. Greater bank competition and a lower risk-free rate raise the screening costs of lending, which can result in pooling Nash equilibria with credit booms. Such equilibria are characterised by...

The paper identifies conditions under which ‘inefficient’ favouritism emerges as an optimal outcome even when the principal do not exhibit ex-ante preferential bias for any particular agent. We characterize how the optimal incentive scheme is influenced in the presence of status incentives....