The paper extends the optimal delegation framework pioneered by Holmström (1977, 1984) to a dynamic environment where, at the outset, the agent privately knows his ability to interpret decision relevant private information received later on. We show that any mechanism can be implemented by a...

In the hold-up problem incomplete contracts cause the proceeds of relation-specific investments to be allocated by ex-post bargaining. The present paper investigates the efficiency of incomplete contracts if individuals have heterogeneous preferences implying heterogeneous bargaining behavior...

This paper considers a firm whose potential employees have private information on both their productivity and the extent of their fairness concerns. Fairness is modelled as inequity aversion, where fair-minded workers suffer if their colleagues get more income net of production costs. Screening...

The standard state-spaces of asymmetric information preclude non-trivial forms of unawareness (Modica and Rustichini, 1994, Dekel, Lipman and Rustichini, 1998). We introduce a generalized state-space model that allows for non-trivial unawareness among several individuals, and which satisfies...

According to several psychological and economic studies, non-binding communication can be an effective tool to increase trust and enhance cooperation. This paper focuses on reasons why people stick to a given promise and analyzes to what extent image concerns of being perceived as a promise...

Heifetz, Meier and Schipper (2005) introduced a generalized state-space model that allows for non-trivial unawareness among several individuals and strong properties of knowledge. We show that this generalized state-space model arises naturally if states consist of maximally consistent sets of...

Partnerships are the prevalent organizational form in many industries. Most partnerships share profits equally among the partners. Following Kandel and Lazear (1992) it is often argued that peer pressure mitigates the arising free-rider problem. This line of reasoning takes the equal sharing...

The rise of barter and non-cash payments has become a dominant feature of the Russian transition to a market economy. This paper confronts with empirical evidence two approaches to explain barter in Russia: the 'illusion view' and the 'trust view' of barter. The 'illusion view' suggests that...

This paper is a reply to Barry Ickes' critique of my paper 'Trust versus Illusion: What is Driving Demonetization in Russia?' in which I show that the data reject Barry Ickes' Virtual Economy explanation of barter in Russia in favor of an institutional explanation based on the lack of trust.