We first point out that the recent property-rights literature is based on three assumptions: (1) that contracts are always subject to renegotiation; (2) that the exercise of a property right confers a private benefit and (3) that parties are risk-neutral. Building on Hart-Moore (1999), we provide conditions under which an optimal contract consists of nothing more than an assignment of property rights. We also examine the robustness of some of the literature's standard predictions about asset ownership to the introduction of mechanisms for eliciting parties' ex post willingness to pay for the assets (such as options or financial markets). To illustrate the issue, we revisit the Hart-Moore (1990) proposition that joint ownership is suboptimal, and argue that ownership by a single party is dominated by joint ownership with put options.

We develop a theory of moral behavior, individual and collective, based on a general model of identity in which people care about “who they are” and infer their own values from past choices. The model sheds light on many empirical puzzles inconsistent with earlier approaches. Identity investments respond nonmonotonically to acts or threats, and taboos on mere thoughts arise to protect beliefs about the “priceless” value of certain social assets. High endowments trigger escalating commitment and a treadmill effect, while competing identities can cause dysfunctional capital destruction. Social interactions induce both social and antisocial norms of contribution, sustained by respectively shunning free riders or do-gooders.

A principal has private information that directly affects her agent's payoff (i.e., "common values" obtains). The authors analyze their relationship as a three-stage game: (1) the principal proposes a contract; (2) the agent accepts or rejects; and (3) the contract is executed. They show that the equilibrium outcomes are the allocations that weakly Pareto dominate the allocation maximizing the payoff of each "type" of the principal within the class of incentive-compatible allocations ensuring the agent his reservation utility irrespective of his beliefs about the principal's type. The authors also characterize the equilibria that are immune to renegotiation. Copyright 1992 by The Econometric Society.

The authors analyze the principal-agent relationship when the principal has private information as a three-stage game: contract proposal, acceptance/refusal, and contract execution. They assume that the information does not directly affect the agent's payoff (private values). Equilibrium exists and is generically locally unique. Moreover, it is Pareto optimal for the different types of principal. The principal generically does strictly better than when the agent knows her information. Equilibrium allocations are the Walrasian equilibria of an "economy" where the traders are different types of principal and "exchange" the slack on the agent's individual rationality and incentive compatibility constraints. Copyright 1990 by The Econometric Society.

The authors provide game theoretic foundations for the classic kinke d demand curve and Edgeworth cycle. In their alternating-move model, there are multiple Markov perfect equilibria of both the kinked deman d curve and Edgeworth cycle variety. In any Markov perfect equilibria , profit is bounded away from the Bertrand equilibria level. A kinked demand curve at the monopoly price is the unique symmetric "renegot iation proof" equilibrium when there is little discounting. The auth ors then endogenize the timing by allowing firms to move at any time. They find that firms end up alternating, thus vindicating the fixed timing assumption of the simpler model. Copyright 1988 by The Econometric Society.

The authors introduce a class of alternating-move, infinite-horizon models of duopoly. The timing captures the presence of short-run commitment s. They apply this framework to a natural monopoly in which costs are so large that at most one firm can make a profit. The firms install short-run capacity. In the unique symmetric Markov perfect equilibriu m, only one firm is active and practices the quantity analogue of lim it pricing. For commitments of brief duration, the market is almost c ontestable. The authors conclude with a discussion of more general mo dels where the alternating timing is derived rather than imposed. Copyright 1988 by The Econometric Society.

As was shown by Dewatripont, optimal long-term contracts under asymmetric information are generally not time-consistent. This paper fully characterizes the equilibrium of a two-period procurement model with commitment and renegotiation. It also analyzes whether renegotiated long-term contracts yield outcomes resembling those under either unrenegotiated long-term contracts or a sequence of short-term contracts, and links the analysis with the multiple unit durable good monopoly problem.

Building on the idea that accounting matters for corporate governance, this paper studies the equilibrium interaction between the measurement rules that firms find privately optimal, firms’ governance, and the liquidity in the secondary market for their assets. This equilibrium approach reveals an excessive use of market-value accounting: corporate performance measures rely excessively on the information generated by other firms’ asset sales and insufficiently on the realization of a firm’s own capital gains. This dries up market liquidity and reduces the informativeness of price signals, thereby making it more costly for firms to overcome their agency problems. (JEL D21, D82, G34, G38, M41, M48)

Concerns of pride, dignity, and the desire to keep hope about future options often lead individuals and groups to walk away from rea sonable offers, try to shift blame for failure onto others or take refuge in political utopias. Costly impasses and conflicts result, such as trials, divorces, strikes, the scapegoating of minorities for economic hardships, and wars. A key and puzzling aspect of these processes is the role played by wishful rationalizations and delusions, as attested by field observers (e.g., Truman F. Bewley (1999) in the context of labor relations; Kevin Woods, James Lacey, and Williamson Murray (2006) in that of war), as well as controlled experiments. Leigh Thompson and George Loewenstein (1992) and Linda C. Babcock et al. (1995) thus demonstrate how subjects in bargaining situations with common knowledge spontaneously generate, through self-serving processing and recall of the same evidence, divergent beliefs about the fairness of their cause and wishful predictions of outcomes, and how these are associated to costly delays and disagreements.