Hold-up risks can be mitigated by creating asymmetric information about the investment using information control. In this paper, we study the investment level and welfare achievable with information control and the information structure that implements them. Our main result identifies a separation between information that creates ex-ante investment incentive and information that causes ex-post ...

In this paper we endogenize the point in time where an agent (and the principal) observe the realization of an additional signal: before the agent’s effort choice (ex ante information) or after (ex post information). We show that there is no difference between incentive and decision problems if the signal is uninformative about the agent’s effort: ex ante information is never worse and – if the...

Estimates of willingness to pay in adversely selected markets tend to understate the ex-ante (or utilitarian) willingness to pay for insurance. This paper derives an ’ex-ante’ willingness to pay curve that measures welfare from behind the veil of ignorance. I provide a strategy to estimate this curve using market choices and costs, combined with a measure of risk aversion. In examples motivated...

We consider a general mechanism design setting where each agent can acquire (covert) information before participating in the mechanism. The central question is whether a mechanism exists which provides the efficient incentives for information acquisition ex ante and implements the efficient allocation conditional on the private information ex post. It is shown that in every private value enviro...

This paper revisits the problem of estimating ex ante cost functions previously studied by Pope and Just (1996) and Moschini (2001). An ex ante cost function that generalizes their ex ante cost functions is introduced, and an econometric procedure for estimating a flexible approximation to it is developed. That generalized cost function is economically relevant not only for the Just and Pope (1...

Th is research examines the ex-ante optimal U.S. Social Security benefi t structure using the model developed in Nishiyama and Smetters (2007). Whereas NS2007 analyzed the effi ciency of diff erent, specifi c alternative designs of the U.S. Social Security system, the current paper attempts to derive the ex-ante best system design among a larger range of diff erent potential Social Security fo...

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 information is discrete, these rents are positive, whereas they are zero in continuous models. Consequ...

A panel of ex-ante forecasts of a single time series is modeled as a dynamic factor model, where the conditional expectation is the single unobserved factor. When applied to out-of-sample forecasting, this leads to combination forecasts that are based on methods other than OLS. These methods perform well in a Monte Carlo experiment. These methods are evaluated empirically in a panel of simulate...

The construction of new explicit Runge–Kutta methods taking into account, not only their accuracy, but also the preservation of Quadratic Invariants (QIs) is studied. An expression of the error of conservation of a QI by a Runge–Kutta method is given, and a new six–stage formula with classical order four and seventh order of QI–conservation is obtained by choosing their coefficients so that the...

On the basis of clinical trial data, 13 strategies for initial screening (filtering) for colorectal cancer are modeled for the purpose of economic evaluation. A wide range of detection cost estimates are generated, although ranking options by detection cost ignores the important consideration of undetected cancers. Formulating the problem as one of cost-effectiveness, however, allows the author...