It is well known that ex-ante randomization can improve upon second best contracts in principal-agent problems. In this note, we show that even the ¯rst{best can be dominated by a random contract. Our example is cast in a standard textbook set-up with two e®ort levels and two states of nature.

I model a financial market that dries out in the wake of premature liquidations. Two main results are obtained. First, liquidity may vanish even if small, riskneutral buyers could easily compensate the ongoing selling. Thus, more markets are vulnerable to quot;runsquot; than suggested by...

This paper considers all-pay contests in which the relationship between bids and allocation reflects a small amount of noise. Prior work had focused on one particular equilibrium. However, there may be other equilibria. To address this issue, we introduce a new and intuitive measure for the...

Optimal rank-order tournaments have traditionally been studied using a first-order approach. The present analysis relies instead on the construction of an "upper envelope" over all incentive compatibility conditions. It turns out that the first-order approach is not innocuous. For example, in...