We analyze optimal hedging contracts and show that although hedging aims at sharing risk, it can lead to more risk-taking. News implying that a hedge is likely to be loss-making undermines the risk-prevention incentives of the protection seller. This incentive problem limits the capacity to...

Derivatives activity, motivated by risk-sharing, can breed risk-taking. Bad news about the risk of the asset underlying the derivative increases the expected liability of a protection seller and undermines her risk-prevention incentives. This limits risk-sharing, and may create endogenous...

This paper examines the agency cost of winner-picking in multi-divisional firms and uses explicit incentive contracts to analyze the interaction between corporate headquarters' investment and incentive policies. Winner-picking, i.e. the efficient reallocation of scarce resources in an internal...