I consider a situation, where the agent can acquire payoff-relevant information either before or after the contract is signed. To raise efficiency, the principal might solicit information; to retain all surplus, however, she must prevent precontractual information gathering. The following class...

The dissertation consists of three chapters. The fist two chapters use principal-agent models to analyze optimal contract design under the assumption that the contract can induce the agent to acquire relevant private information. Specifically, Chapter 1 demonstrates the use of stochastic...