The paper studies procurement contracts with pre-project investigations in the presence of adverse selection and moral hazard. To model the procurer's problem, we extend a standard sequential screening model to endogenous information acquisition with moral hazard. The optimal contract displays...

We study the optimal hierarchical structure of an organization under limited commitment. The organization cannot make a long term commitment to wages and output levels, while it can commit to its hierarchical structure. We show that the optimal hierarchical structure is horizontal when it is...

Without a multiplicative interaction between durability and other quality attributes Swan's (1970) independence result is violated, even with constant marginal costs. Subsequent distortions are aligned when the marginal cost of quality does not increase too much with durability.

We study the effectiveness of mediators in situations of conflict. In a game of cheap talk a principal may employ a mediator whose task is to gather information and make non--binding proposals. We show that mediators facilitate information transmission and are helpful if and only if the...

We study ex post information rents in sequential screening models where the agent receives private ex ante and ex post information. The principal has to pay ex post information rents for preventing the agent to coordinate lies about his ex ante and ex post information. When the agent’s ex ante...

This paper studies a principal-agent relationship in which either the principal or a supervisor can monitor the agent's hidden action by the use of identical monitoring technologies. The author assumes that signals are private information and commitment to monitoring is not possible. He shows...

We introduce ex post participation constraints in the standard sequential screening model. This captures the presence of consumer withdrawal rights as, for instance, mandated by European Union regulation of “distance sales contracts”. With such additional constraints, the optimal contract is...