In an incomplete contract setting, we analyze the contracting out of public service provision, comparing the performance of for-profit and not-for-profit private firms. Two institutional arrangements are considered, control rights lying either with the firm as under the UK's Private Finance...

The paper analyzes the relationship between decision rules and information acquisition in decision-making processes. The setting under consideration is one where information acquisition and decision making are assigned to different agents and the decision-maker's preferences are not observable....

The paper focuses on the creation of information for decision-making when agents' effort is non observable and rewards are indirect, that is, only based on the final decision. Following Dewatripont and Tirole (1999), the paper shows that the creation of advocates of special interests, as opposed...

In the last decade the Italian economy has underperformed compared both with the previous decades and with the main European countries. It is widely acknowledged that this evolution reflects unresolved structural problems, which have become more urgent in view of the major changes in the world...

The paper shows that siting procedures taking local preferences into account should be preferred when the heterogeneity in preferences across communities is large relative to that in constructing and operating costs. Preferences are better elicited through auction-like mechanisms rather than...