Anecdotal evidence suggests that agents often spend resources distorting information transmitted to principals. We present a model where costly information distortion emerges as equilibrium behavior. The information structure we focus on is intermediate between (and encompasses) the cases of...

The idea that commitment is valuable plays a key role in many economic models. However, Bagwell (1995) has shown that commitment may have no value if there is (even a slight) noise in the observation of the leader's action, thus casting doubt on the notion that commitment has strategic value....

In this article I analyze strategic investment under uncertainty in a new market, where firms face a tradeoff between commitment and flexibility. The model predicts asymmetric equilibria under fairly general conditions, even though firms are ex ante identical and have symmetric opportunities to...

We examine a model of contracting where parties interact repeatedly and can contract at any point in time, but writing formal contracts is costly. A contract can describe the external environment and the parties' behavior in a more or less detailed way, and the cost of writing a contract is...

We study the optimal pattern of outlays for a single firm pursuing an R&D program over time. In the deterministic case (a) the amount of progress required to complete the project is known and (b) the relationship between outlays and progress is known. In this case it is optimal to increase...

Price controls create opportunities for international arbitrage. Many have argued that such arbitrage, if tolerated, will undermine intellectual property rights and dull the incentives for investment in research-intensive industries such as pharmaceuticals. We challenge this orthodox view and...