Trades in DAX index options with identical maturities cluster around particular classes of strike prices. For example, options with strikes ending on 50 are less traded than options with strikes ending on 00. Clustering is higher when options with close strike prices are good substitutes. The...

In many economic situations several principals contract with the same agents sequentially. Asymmetric learning about agents' abilities provides the first principal with an informational advantage and has profound implications for the design of incentive contracts. We show that the principal...

Holmström's (1982/99) career concerns model has become an important workhorse for the analysis of agency issues in many fields. The underlying signal jamming argument requires players to use information in a Bayesian way which may or may not reasonably approximate real-life decision makers'...

An essential ingredient in models of career concerns is ex ante uncertainty about an agent's type. This paper shows how career concerns can arise even in the absence of any such ex ante uncertainty, if the unobservable actions that an agent takes influence his future productivity. By...