Why is it difficult to restructure sovereign debt in a timely manner? In this paper, we present a theory of the sovereign debt-restructuring process in which delay arises as individual creditors hold up a settlement in order to extract greater payments from the sovereign. We then use the theory to analyse recent policy proposals aimed at ensuring equal repayment of creditor claims. Strikingly, we show that such collective action policies may increase delay by encouraging free riding on negotiation costs, even while preventing hold-up and reducing total negotiation costs. A calibrated version of the model can account for observed delays and finds that free riding is quantitatively relevant: whereas in simple low-cost debt-restructuring operations, collective mechanisms will reduce delay by more than 60%, in high-cost complicated restructurings, the adoption of such mechanisms results in a doubling of delay.

The paper introduces the problem of unawareness into principal–agent theory and discusses optimal incentive contracts when the agent may be unaware of her action space. Depending on the agent's default behaviour, it can be optimal for the principal to propose an incomplete contract (that keeps the agent unaware) or a complete contract. The key trade-off is that of enlarging the agent's choice set versus adding costly incentive constraints. If agents differ in their unawareness, optimal contracts show a self-reinforcing pattern: if there are few unaware agents in the economy optimal contracts promote awareness, if unawareness is wide spread optimal contracts shroud the contracting environment, thus keeping the agent unaware.

We study strategic information transmission in an organization consisting of an infinite sequence of individual decision-makers. Each decision-maker chooses an action and receives an informative but imperfect signal of the once-and-for-all realization of an unobserved state. The state affects all individuals' preferences over present and future decisions. Decision-makers do not directly observe the realized signals or actions of their predecessors. Instead, they must rely on cheap-talk messages in order to accumulate information about the state. Each decision-maker is therefore both a receiver of information with respect to his decision and a sender with respect to all future decisions. We show that if preferences are not perfectly aligned, “full learning” equilibria—ones in which the individuals' posterior beliefs eventually place full weight on the true state—do not exist. This is so both in the case of private communication, in which each individual only hears the message of his immediate predecessor, and in the case of public communication, in which a decision-maker hears the message of all his predecessors. Surprisingly, in the latter case full learning may be impossible even in the limit as all members of the organization become perfectly patient. We also consider the case where all individuals have access to a mediator who can work across time periods arbitrarily far apart. In this case, full learning equilibria exist.

A search-theoretic model of the retail market for illegal drugs is developed. Trade occurs in bilateral, potentially long-lived matches between sellers and buyers. Buyers incur search costs when experimenting with a new seller. Moral hazard is present because buyers learn purity only after a trade is made. This model is consistent with some new stylized facts about the drugs market, and it is informative for policy design. The effectiveness of different enforcement strategies is evaluated, including some novel ones that leverage the moral hazard present in the market.