We consider an economy where individuals privately choose effort and trade competitively priced securities that pay off with effort-determined probability. We show that if insurance against a negative shock is sufficiently incomplete, then standard functional formrestrictions ensure that...

We study a setting in which one or two agents conduct research on behalf of a principal. The agents' success depends on effort and the choice of a research technology that is uncertain with respect to its quality. A single agent has no incentive to deviate from the principal's preferred...

We consider an economy where individuals privately choose effort and trade competitively priced securities that pay off with effort-determined probability. We show that if insurance against a negative shock is sufficiently incomplete, then standard functional form restrictions ensure that...

We consider an economy where individuals privately choose effort and trade competitively priced securities that pay off with effort-determined probability. We show that if insurance against a negative shock is sufficiently incomplete, then standard functional formrestrictions ensure that...

With moral hazard and anonymous asset trade, first-order conditions need not characterize effort and portfolio choices. The standard procedure for establishing validity of the first-order approach in economies with one hidden asset is not fruitful when multiple assets are hidden.

In this paper, we study a pure exchange economy with idiosyncratic uncertainty, hidden action and multiple consumption goods. We consider two different market structures : contingent markets on the one hand, and financial and spot markets on the other hand. We propose a competitive equilibrium...

It is well known that ex-ante randomization can improve upon second best contracts in principal-agent problems. In this note, we show that even the ¯rst{best can be dominated by a random contract. Our example is cast in a standard textbook set-up with two e®ort levels and two states of nature.

While strong social ties help individuals cope with missing institutions, trade is essentially limited to those who are part of the social network. We examine what makes the decision to trust a stranger different from the decision to trust a member of a given social network (a friend), by...

We consider an economy where individuals privately choose effort and trade competitively priced securities that pay off with effort-determined probability. We show that if insurance against a negative shock is sufficiently incomplete, then standard functional form restrictions ensure that...

We study the problem of an investor that buys an equity stake in an entrepreneurial venture, under the assumption that the former cannot monitor the latter's operations. The dynamics implied by the optimal incentive scheme is rich and quite different from that induced by other models of repeated...