We develop a pure moral hazard model, and a closely related hybrid one, where there are both hidden actions and hidden information, to derive the restrictions from optimal contract theory that characterize set identification. In pure moral hazard models, the expected utility of managers is equalized across states, whereas in a hybrid model the optimal contract equates the expected utility of truth telling with the expected utility of lying. These restrictions are testable. Our identi…cation analysis establishes sharp and tight bounds on the identified set. Our tests and estimators are based on these bounds. We apply semiparametric methods to test the models, estimate the structural parameters, and quantify the effects of hidden actions versus hidden information. The pure moral hazard model is rejected on a large panel data set measuring the compensation of chief executive officers and the …financial and accounting returns of the publicly traded …firms they manage. We do not, however, reject the restrictions of the hybrid model, and our structural estimates for that model show the degree of private information varies considerably across sectors and over fi…rm size.

This paper investigates the effects of regulatory interventions on contracting relationships within firms by examining the impacts of the Sarbanes–Oxley (SOX) Act on CEO compensation. Using panel data of the S&P 1500 firms, it quantifies welfare gains from a principal–agent model with hidden information and hidden actions. It finds that SOX: (1) reduced the conflict of interest between shareholders and their CEOs, mainly by reducing shareholder loss from CEOs deviating from their goal of expected value maximization; (2) increased the cost of agency, or the risk premium CEOs are paid to align their interests with those of shareholders; (3) increased administrative costs in the primary sector (which includes utilities and energy) but the effect in the other two broadly defined sectors, services and consumer goods, was more nuanced; and (4) had no effect on the attitude of CEOs toward risk.

This paper examines household fertility and female labor supply over the life cycle. We investigate how maternal time inputs, market expenditures on offspring, as well as the benefits they yield their parents, vary with ages of offspring, and influence female labor supply and contraceptive behavior. Our econometric framework combines a female labor supply model and a contraceptive choice index function. It also accounts for the fact that conceptions are not perfectly controllable events. Using longitudinal data on married couples from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we estimate these equations and test alternative specifications of the technologies governing chld care. Our findings suggest that while parents cannot perfectly control conceptions, variations in child care costs do affect the life cycle spacing of births. Furthermore, our results demonstrate the gains of modelling the linkages between female labor supply and fertility behavior at the household level.