We study behavior within a simple principal-agent experiment. Our design allows for a large class of linear contracts. Principals can offer any feasible combination of (negative) fixed wages and incentives in the form of return sharing. This great contractual flexibility allows us to study...

Online "feedback mechanisms" - also known as "reputation systems" - have been implemented in the most important private e-markets, such as eBay, Yahoo!, Amazon to foster trust and cooperation among trading partners. In this paper we discuss the main issues relevant for the optimal design of such...

We investigate the differentiated duopoly and triopoly markets in which firms can choose to strategically delegate when the biased managers hold about the market demand incorrectly under Bertrand competition. Contrast to previous studies under duopoly, one firm chooses delegate, while the other...

We develop a model of strategic contractual incompleteness that identifies conditions under which principals might omit even costlessly verifiable terms. We then use experiments to test comparative statics predictions of the model. While it is well known that verifiability imperfections can...

We conducted six treatments of a standard moral hazard experiment with hidden action. All treatments had identical Nash equilibria. However, the behavior in all treatments and periods was inconsistent with established agency theory (Nash equilibrium). In the early periods of the experiment,...

We consider an infinitely repeated game in which a privately informed, long-lived manager raises funds from short-lived investors in order to finance a project. The manager can signal project quality to investors by making a (possibly costly) forward-looking disclosure about her project's...

We consider an infinitely repeated game in which a privately informed, long-lived manager raises funds from short-lived investors in order to finance a project. The manager can signal project quality to investors by making a (possibly costly) forward-looking disclosure about her project's...

Modern 'principal-agent theory' has made a lot of progress in proposing theoretical Solutions to agency problems. This paper contributes to a better understanding of behavior in agency situations. In particular, we provide experimental evidence on offered contracts and effort choices in a simple...

This paper examines the self-enforcing conditions of linear contracts commonly used in agriculture. In a repeated game between a risk neutral principal and a risk averse agent, I show that when contracts are constrained by the requirement of being self-enforcing, risk aversion and variance can...

We reconsider the endogenous choice of delegation to a manager by two down-stream firms in both a Cournot and a Bertrand vertical market with network effects. An upstream monopolist charges a two-part tariff for a crucial input. By applying the Nash solution in a centralized bargaining, we show...