This paper describes a principal-agent relationship with a supervisor who has information about the agent. The agent and the supervisor have the possibility to collude and misinform the principal. In accordance with the existing literature there exists an optimal contract which excludes...

We analyze the two goals behind the European Bologna Process of increasing student mobility: enabling graduates to develop multi-cultural skills and increasing the quality of universities. We isolate three effects: 1) a competition effect that raises quality; 2) a free rider effect that lowers...

We consider a dynamic screening model where the agent may go bankrupt due to, for example, cash constraints. We model bankruptcy as a verifiable event that occurs whenever the agent makes a per period loss. This leads to less stringent truth-telling constraints than those considered in the...

Restrictions on certifiers' fee structures are irrelevant for maximizing their profits and trade efficiency, and for the implementability of (monotone) distributions of rents. The irrelevance results exploit that certification schemes involve two substitutable dimensions – the fee structure...

We study information flows in an organization with a top management (principal) and multiple subunits (agents) with private information that determines the organization's aggregate efficiency. Under centralization, eliciting the agents' private information may induce the principal to manipulate...

A multi-product monopolist sells sequentially to a buyer who privately learns his valuations. Using big data, the monopolist learns the intertemporal correlation of the buyer's valuations. Perfect price discrimination is generally unattainable – even when the seller learns the correlation...

We study an agency model with vertical hierarchy - the principal, the prime-agent and the sub-agent. The principal faces a project that needs both agents' services. Due to costly communication, the principal receives a report only from the prime-agent, who receives a report from the sub-agent....