IN A SIMPLE DEBT CONTRACT the investor seizes all of a firm's assets when the project return is below some threshold and receives a constant payment when the return is higher. Krasa and Villamil (2000) show that simple debt contracts that are optimal (ie., give the investor the highest payoff) among the class of deterministic contracts in the costly state verification model, and that satisfy technical conditions (Al), (A2), and a reservation utility constraint, are optimal in a more general costly enforcement model even when stochastic monitoring is possible.2 The italicized segment of this statement was not made explicit in Theorem 1 in Krasa and Villamil (2000). As Sharma points out, this restriction is necessary for the result to hold. Sharma also points out that assumption (A2) had a typographical error. Assumption (A2) in Krasa and Villamil (2000) should have appeared

This paper analyzes choice-theoretic costly enforcement in an intertemporal contracting model with a differentially informed investor and entrepreneur. An intertemporal contract is modeled as a mechanism in which there is limited commitment to payment and enforcement decisions. The goal of the analysis is to characterize the effect of choice-theoretic costly enforcement on the structure of optimal contracts. The paper shows that simple debt is the optimal contract when commitment is limited and costly enforcement is a decision variable (Theorem 1). In contrast, stochastic contracts are optimal when agents can commit to the ex-ante optimal decisions (Theorem 2). The paper also shows that the costly state verification model can be viewed as a reduced form of an enforcement model in which agents choose payments and strategies as part of a perfect Bayesian Nash equilibrium.

[We analyze the Shapley value allocation of an economy with differential information. Since the intent of the Shapley value is to measure the sum of the expected marginal contributions made by an agent to any coalition to which he/she belongs, the value allocation of an economy with differential information provides an interesting way to measure the information advantage of an agent. This feature of the Shapley value allocation is not necessarily shared by the rational expectation equilibrium. Thus, we analyze the informational structure of an economy with differential information from a different and new viewpoint. In particular we address the following questions: How do coalitions of agents share their private information? How can one measure the information advantage or superiority of an agent? Is each agent's private information verifiable by other members of a coalition? Do coalitions of agents pool their private information? Do agents have an incentive to report their true private information? What is the correct concept of a value allocation in an economy with differential information? Do value allocations exist in an economy with differential information? We provide answers to each of these questions.]

We investigate the susceptibility of democracies to demagogues, studying tensions between representatives who guard voters’ long-run interests and demagogues who cater to voters’ short-run desires. Parties propose consumption and investment. Voters base choices on current-period consumption and valence shocks. Younger/poorer economies and economically disadvantaged voters are attracted to the demagogue’s disinvestment policies, forcing farsighted representatives to mimic them. This electoral competition can destroy democracy: if capital falls below a critical level, a death spiral ensues with capital stocks falling thereafter. We identify when economic development mitigates this risk and characterize how the death-spiral risk declines as capital grows large.

How do entrepreneurs vary firm size, capital structure, and default to manage risk? We show that more risk-averse entrepreneurs run smaller, more highly leveraged firms and default less, because running a smaller firm with higher debt reduces personal funds at risk in the firm. Optimal default depends on ex ante debt, consumption forgone from firm liquidation, and owner capacity to inject funds. We show that entrepreneurs sacrifice current consumption in the hope of future success that never materializes for the bottom 25 percent, but entrepreneurship is a path toward great wealth and high consumption for the top quartile.