We analyze a situation where a monopolist is selling an indivisible good to risk neutral buyers who only have an estimate of their private valuations. The seller can release, without observing, certain additional signals that affect the buyers’ valuations. Our main result is that in the expected revenue maximizing mechanism, the seller makes available all the information that she can, and her expected revenue is the same as it would be if she could observe the part of the information that is “new” to the buyers. We also show that this mechanism can be implemented by what we call a handicap auction in interesting applications. In the first round of this auction, each buyer picks a price premium from a menu offered by the seller (a smaller premium costs more). Then the seller releases the additional signals. In the second round, the buyers bid in a second-price auction where the winner pays the sum of his premium and the second highest non-negative bid. In the case of a single buyer, this mechanism simplifies to a menu of European call options.

We propose a theory of the market for venture capital that links the excess return to venture equity to the scarcity of venture capitalists (VCs). High returns make the VCs more selective and eager to terminate nonperforming ventures because they can move on to new ones. The scarcity of VCs enables them to internalize their social value, and the competitive equilibrium is socially optimal. Moreover, the bilaterally efficient contract is a simple equity contract. We estimate the model for the period 1989–2001 and compute the excess return to venture capital, which turns out to be 8.6 percent. Finally, we back out the return of solo entrepreneurs, which is increasing in their wealth and ranges between zero and 3.5 percent.

This paper analyzes Markov equilibria in a model of strategic lending in which (i) agents cannot commit to long‐term contracts, (ii) contracts are incomplete, and (iii) incumbent lenders can coordinate their actions. Default cycles occur endogenously over time along every equilibrium path. After a sequence of bad shocks, the borrower in a competitive market accumulates debt so large that the incumbent lenders exercise monopoly power. Even though the incumbents could maintain this power forever, they find it profitable to let the borrower regain access to the competitive market after a sequence of good shocks. Equilibria are computed numerically, and their attributes are qualitatively consistent with numerous known empirical facts on sovereign lending. In addition, the model predicts that a borrower who accumulates debt overhang will regain access to the competitive credit market only after good shocks. This prediction is shown to be consistent with data on emerging market economies.

This paper analyzes a bilateral trade model where the buyer's valuation for the object is uncertain and she observes only a signal about her valuation. The seller gives a take-it-or-leave-it offer to the buyer. Our goal is to characterize those signal structures which maximize the buyer's expected payoff. We identify a buyer-optimal signal structure which generates (i) efficient trade and (ii) a unit-elastic demand. Furthermore, we show that every other buyer-optimal signal structure yields the same outcome as the one we identify: in particular, the same price.

We consider a growth model in which intergenerational transfers are made via stocks of private and public capital. Private capital is the outcome of individuals' private savings while decisions regarding public capital are made collectively. We hypothesize that private saving choices evolve through individual selection while public saving decisions are the result of group selection. The main result of the paper is that the equilibrium rate of return to private capital is at least 2–3 percent more than the rate of return to public capital. In other words, social choices involving intertemporal trade-offs exhibit much more patience than individual choices do.

We consider a dynamic economy in which agents are repeatedly matched and decide whether or not to form profitable partnerships. Each agent has a physical color and a social color. An agent's social color acts as a signal, conveying information about the physical color of agents in his partnership history. Before an agent makes a decision, he observes his match's physical and social colors. Neither the physical color nor the social color is payoff relevant. We identify environments where equilibria arise in which agents condition their decisions on the physical and social colors of their potential partners. That is, they discriminate.

We reexamine Alan R. Rogers' (1994) analysis of the biological basis of the rate of time preference. Although his basic insight concerning the derivation of the utility function holds up, the functional form he uses does not generate equilibrium evolutionary behavior. Moreover, Rogers relies upon an interior solution for a particular kind of intergenerational transfer. We show such interior solutions need not generally arise. Hence Rogers most striking prediction, namely that the real interest rate should be about 2 percent per annum, does not follow.

This paper reconsiders the problem of a durable-good monopolist who cannot make intertemporal commitments. The buyer’s valuation is binary and his private information. The seller has access to dynamic contracts and, in each period, decides whether to deploy the previous period’s contract or to replace it with a new one. The main result of the paper is that the Coase conjecture fails: the monopo-list’s payoff is bounded away from the low valuation irrespective of the discount factor.

This paper considers a Principal–Agent model with hidden action in which the Principal can monitor the Agent by acquiring independent signals conditional on effort at a constant marginal cost. The Principal aims to implement a target effort level at minimal cost. The main result of the paper is that the optimal information‐acquisition strategy is a two‐threshold policy and, consequently, the equilibrium contract specifies two possible wages for the Agent. This result provides a rationale for the frequently observed single‐bonus wage contracts .

This paper analyzes Bayesian normal form games in which players write contracts that condition their actions on the contracts of other players. These contracts are required to be representable in a formal language. This is accomplished by constructing contracts which are definable functions of the Godel code of every other player's contract. We provide a complete characterization of the set of allocations supportable as pure-strategy Bayesian equilibria of this contracting game. When information is complete, this characterization provides a folk theorem. In general, the set of supportable allocations is smaller than the set supportable by a centralized mechanism designer.