This paper analyzes optimal foreign aid policy in a neoclassical growth framework with a conflict of interest between the donor and the recipient government. Aid conditionality is modeled as a limited enforceable dynamic contract. We define the contract to be self-enforcing if, at any point in...

Economists face difficulties explaining the strong cyclicality of US unemployment. This paper contributes both by developing modeling tools and evaluating a potentially important explanation. The paper develops a parsimonious equilibrium model of job search with aggregate productivity shocks,...

We design a multiple project-funding contract that provides optimal incentives to recipients, in a setting where externalities exist among the multiple projects and where donors and recipients may differ in their valuation of the projects. To do so, we study optimal incentive payments in a...

We present the optimal contract for financing a project that has N stages to be completed sequentially when the principal can not commit to abandone the project before it is completed and the project to be completed is valued by the agent. In a dynamic moral hazard setting, we find that the...

Consider a collection of agents with stochastically fluctuating heterogeneous endowments. It seems natural that credit is the appropriate market mechanism for insuring such fluctuations: individuals save when endowment is high, and deplete their savings or borrow when their endowment is low. The...

We study a multiperiod principal-agent problem with moral hazard in which the agent is required to exert effort only in the initial period of the contract. The effort choice of the agent in this first period determines the conditional distribution of output in the following periods. The paper...

We characterize the solution to a dynamic model of risk sharing under non-commitment when saving is possible. Savings can play two important roles. First savings can be used to smooth aggregate consumption across different periods. Second, when savings are observable, they can act as a...

We characterize the optimal renegotiation-proof contract in a dynamic Principal-Agent model in which the type of the agent may change stochastically over time. Contrary to the case with constant types, the ex ante optimal contract may be renegotiation-proof even if types are highly correlated....

This paper describes optimal contracts in a dynamic costly state verification model with stochastic monitoring. An agent operates a risky project on behalf of a principal who can observe the project’s revenues at a cost. We show that an optimal contract exists such that, at any history, either...

We develop general recursive methods to solve for optimal contracts in dynamic principal-agent environments with hidden states and hidden actions. In our baseline model, the principal observes nothing other than transfers. Nevertheless, optimal incentive-constrained insurance can be attained. We...