An increasing segment of economic activity is taking place in nonmarket situations in which economic agents act outside the traditional markets or create markets to deal with specific resource allocation problems. One such problem involves the selection by a buyer of a contractor using a competitive bidding process. Competitive bidding is used extensively by the government for the selection of suppliers of goods and services and for the sale of resources such as offshore oil leases. Firms may use competitive bidding for the selection of certain suppliers of factor inputs and may attempt to sell certain products in markets in which competitive price quoting is the established market mechanism. This paper is concerned with a bidding process in which a firm has an opportunity to bid on a project under the terms of an incentive contract. Incentive contracts

Self-regulation is the private provision of public goods and private redistribution. This paper examines the scope of self-regulation motivated by altruistic moral preferences that are reciprocal and stronger the closer are citizens in a socioeconomic distance. The focus is on the role of organizations in increasing self-regulation by mitigating free-rider problems. Social label and certification organizations can expand the scope of self-regulation but not beyond that with unconditional altruism. Enforcement organizations expand the scope of self-regulation farther, and for-profit enforcement is more aggressive than non-profit enforcement. Enforcement through social pressure imposed by NGOs also expands the scope of self-regulation.

Develops a theory for the demand for the advising and distribution services of investment banks when there is information asymmetry between an issuer of new securities and the investment bankers. The advising services of the investment banker are valuable when the banker has better information about the capital market, while the distribution services are useful when the banker is able to create demand for the issue. This analysis considers the delegation contract between the issuer and the banker in a negotiated, fixed price offering. The delegation contract exists when the issuer enlists the banker to both advise on the offering price and distribute the securities. In this case, the banker's decision as to whether the contract should be accepted is based on the banker's private information. Given these conditions, a model is presented, and an example is provided to illustrate the optimal delegation contract. Also examined are the situation in which the issuer only utilizes the distribution services of the banker and the situation in which the investment banker is not engaged at all. Results show that when the banker is better informed than the issuer, the new issues are underpriced. Further, those issuers of unseasoned securities who are less informed about the capital market than the issuers of seasoned securities are more likely to seek the advice of investment bankers. (SRD)

This paper presents a theory of the demand for investment banking advising and distribution services for the case in which the investment banker is better informed about the capital market than is the issuer, and the issuer cannot observe the distribution effort expended by the banker. The optimal contract under which the offer price decision is delegated to the better‐informed banker in order to deal with the adverse selection and moral hazard problems resulting from the informational asymmetry and the observability problem is characterized. The model demonstrates a positive demand for investment banking advising and distribution services and provides an explanation of the underpricing of new issues.