We develop a dynamic principal–agent model to show how imperfect public information and asymmetric beliefs about payoff-relevant parameters, agency conflicts, and the agent's implicit incentives to influence the principal's posterior beliefs through his unobservable actions interact to affect...

We document empirical support for a key micro-level channel—innovation by young, private firms—through which financial sector deregulation affects economic growth. We find that intrastate banking deregulation, which increased the local market power of banks, decreased the level and risk of...

We develop a unified model of the interactions among investors, fund companies, and fund managers. We show that the interplay between a manager's incentives from her compensation structure and career concerns leads to a nonmonotonic (approximately U-shaped) relation between her risk choices and...

We examine the financing choices of undiversified owner-managers in a continuous-time model. Managers' financing choices as well as their dynamic equity stakes, which trade off their private benefits and the costs they incur due to their lack of diversification, are simultaneously and...

We analyze 582 R&D agreements between Air Force agencies and outside partners. Agenices choose partners and contractual terms consistent with predictions from a rational model, which suggests that they could be incentive efficient from an ex ante perspective.

We develop a structural model to investigate the effects of asymmetric beliefs and agency conflicts on dynamic principal--agent relationships. Optimism has a first-order effect on incentives, investments, and output, which could reconcile the private equity puzzle. Asymmetric beliefs cause...