This paper characterizes the choice rules that can be implemented when agents are unable to commit themselves not to renegotiate the mechanism. Copyright 1999 by The Review of Economic Studies Limited.

This Paper surveys the theoretical literature on the effect of soft budget constraints (SBC) on economies in transition from centralization to capitalism; it also reviews our understanding of SBC in general. It focuses on the conception of the SBC syndrome as a commitment problem. We show that...

There is a voluminous theoretical literature on sealed high-bid auctions (auctions in which bids are sealed and the high bidder pays his bid). See for example, Vickrey (1961), Myerson (1981), Riley and Samuelson (1981), Milgrom and Weber (1982), Mathews (1983), Maskin and Riley (1984),...

We model organization as the command-and-communication network of managers erected on top of technology (which is modeled as a collection of plants). In our framework, the role of a manager is to deal with shocks that affect the plants that he oversees directly or indirectly. Organizational form...