Research in corporate governance has predominantly focused on the moral hazard problem and governance mechanisms that mitigate it. In this conceptual paper, we instead focus on adverse selection as an alternative agency problem, emphasizing well-intentioned managers making strategic choices they...

This paper applies direct tests for adverse selection and moral hazard in the market for child care. A unique data set containing quality measures of various characteristics of child care provided by 746 rooms in 400 centers, as well as the evaluation of the same attributes by 3,490 affiliated...

Information asymmetries are important in theory but difficult to identify in practice. We estimate the empirical importance of adverse selection and moral hazard in a consumer credit market using a new field experiment methodology. We randomized 58,000 direct mail offers issued by a major South...

We study how statutory-law changes relate to disclosure, pricing, and liquidity in the used-car market. Federal odometer laws mandated disclosure of mileage on car titles upon ownership transfer and thereby enhanced enforcement of odometer-fraud prohibitions. Exploiting time variations in state...

We study the role of information exchange, leadership and coordination in team or partnership structures. For this purpose, we view individuals jointly engaging in productive processes -- a 'team' -- as endowed with individual and privately held information on the joint production process. Once...

Within a production theoretic framework, this paper considers an axiomatic approach to benchmark selection. It is shown that two simple and weak axioms: efficiency and comprehensive monotonicity characterize a natural family of benchmarks which typically becomes unique. Further axioms are added...