Three designs of auctions with quality thresholds are considered. The quality threshold is not known with certainty by the bidders. In one scheme, quality plans submitted by potential bidders are evaluated first and price bids for only those plans that have been approved are invited. The second...

The effect of limited liability on debt contracts has been analysed as creating the possibility of credit rationing and hence inefficiently low levels of investment. In this paper we instead focus on restrictions on the use of debt finance to avoid moral hazard problems but which add...

We consider the employment relation within firms with reference to investment in human capital. Although the firm knows the future value of the worker's human capital to the worker, the worker only finds this out after the training is complete. Both moral hazard and adverse selection problems...

Consider two agents who learn the value of an unknown parameter by observing a sequence of private signals. Will the agents commonly learn the value of the parameter, i.e., will the true value of the parameter become approximate common-knowledge? If the signals are independent and identically...

The author solves for the reputational equilibrium in a class of linear quadratic Gaussian dynamic games with noisy control. This equilibrium is particularly simple to describe and tractable. There is imperfect monitoring but a sequential equilibrium is found where the uninformed agents always...

In this paper several firms compete for the right to obtain intellectual property protection for a basic idea which has subsequent potential applications. The modelling employs an auction analogy, taking the context to be an n-player all-pay auction, with a reserve. We find that, even taking...