Where product innovation requires several complementary patents, fragmented property rights can be a factor that limits firms' willingness to invest in the development and commercialization of new products. This paper studies multiple simultaneous R&D contests for complementary patents and how...

We consider a moral hazard problem in which a principal provides incentives to a team of agents to work on a risky project. The project consists of two milestones of unknown feasibility. While working unsuccessfully, the agents' private beliefs regarding the feasibility of the project decline....

We study optimal direct mechanisms for a credence goods expert who can be altruistic or spiteful. The expert has private information about her distributional preferences and possibly also about her customer's needs. We introduce a method that allows the customer to offer separate contracts to...