abstract the purpose of this paper is to test the hypothesis first proposed by romer (1993); suggesting that inflation is lower in more open economies. according to this hypothesis, central banks have a lower incentive to engineer surprise inflations in more-open economies because the phillips curve is steeper. furthermore, comparing with other empirical studies, this paper has used the new kof...

I examine the incentives of firms to communicate entry into an industry where the incumbent writes exclusionary, long-term contracts with consumers. The entrant’s information provision affects the optimal contract proposal by the incumbent and leads to communication incentives that are highly non-linear in the size of the innovation. Entry with small and medium-to-large innovations is announced...

Reverse share tenancy, i.e., sharecropping between a poor landlord and a rich tenant, is common throughout the developing world. Yet it can only fit the canonical principal-agent model of sharecropping under specific circumstances. This paper develops and tests between three theoretical explanations for reverse share tenancy based respectively on (i) risk-aversion on the part of both the landlo...

We analyze the bilateral trade of divisible goods in the presence of stochastic transaction costs. Mutual best-response conditions are applied to a model of optimal investment under uncertainty. The first-best solution involves a single transaction, but such behavior is not incentive compatible without courtenforceable contracts. We solve for a second-best policy in which some gains from trade ...

Studies of dynamic economic models often rely on each agent having a smooth value function and a well-defined optimal strategy. For time-homogeneous optimal control problems with a one-dimensional diffusion, we prove that the corresponding value function must be twice continuously differentiable under Lipschitz, growth, and non-vanishing-volatility conditions. Under similar conditions, the valu...

Consider a strategic environment subject to moral hazard and adverse selection across multiple stages, with rich communication protocols. In this paper, we prove that for any allocation, there exist linear transfers to make it incentive compatible if and only if every undetectable deviation from honesty and obedience is unprofitable when the transfers equal zero, where ‘undetectable’ means that...

This paper examines the effects of an exogenous shift in the cost of contractual completeness induced by workload spikes on the endogenous selection of procurement terms. I conduct an instrumental-variable estimation of the causal effect of workload on contracting. In a sample of 150−thousand contracts from 85 civilian procurement offices over 11 years, increases in contracting officer workload...

When the quality of a good is at the discretion of the seller, how can buyers assure that the seller provides the mutually efficient level of quality? Contracts that provide a bonus to the seller if the quality is acceptable, or impose a penalty on the seller if quality is unacceptable, can in theory provide efficient incentives. But how are such contracts enforced? While the courts can be used...

We study two types of robust contracting problem under hidden action in continuous time. In type I problem, the principal is ambiguous about the project cash flows, while he is ambiguous about the agent’s beliefs in type II problem. The principal designs a robust contract that maximizes his utility under the worst-case scenario subject to the agent’s incentive and participation constraints. We ...

Should You Allow Your Agent to Become Your Competitor? On Non-Compete Agreements in Employment Contracts We discuss a principal-agent model in which the principal has the opportunity to include a non-compete agreement in the employment contract. We show that not imposing such an agreement can be beneficial for the principal as the possibility to leave the firm generates implicit incentives for ...