I study the optimal choice of investment projects in a continuous time moral hazard model with multitasking. While in the first best, projects are invariably chosen by the net present value (NPV) criterion, moral hazard introduces a cutoff for project execution which depends on both a project's...

I study information disclosure as a means to create conflict. A sender has information about two parties' relative strength and seeks to keep them engaged in a war of attrition for as long as possible. In the unique Markov Perfect Equilibrium, the sender employs “shifting rhetoric”: she...

How does a firm's disclosure policy depend on its choice of financing? In this paper, I study a firm that finances a project with uncertain payoffs and jointly chooses its disclosure policy and the security issued. I show that it is optimal to truthfully reveal whether the project's payoffs are...

We study decentralized markets in which advisers have conflicts of interest and compete for customers via information provision. We show that competition partially disciplines conflicted advisers. The equilibrium features information dispersion and sorting of heterogeneous customers and...

In dynamic models driven by di usion processes, the smoothness of the value function plays a crucial role for characterizing properties of the solution. However, available methods to ensure such smoothness have limited applicability in economics, and economists have often relied on either...

I present a cheap talk model of information leaks in takeovers. Takeover targets strategically leak information about the value of synergies to attract an additional bidder. Targets with high synergies leak exaggerated information, cause a runup, and are sold in an auction. Targets with low...

We provide a novel theory of monitoring. A monitor with career concerns oversees an agent and generates verifiable evidence if the agent shirks. The monitor's ability is uncertain and requires costly investment to maintain. The equilibrium features a "slippery slope'': unpunished shirking...