Related papers: The Screening Cost of Liquidity
We study a screening problem in which an agent privately observes a set of feasible technologies and can strategically disclose only a subset to the principal. The principal then takes an action whose payoff consequences for both players…
A screening instrument is costly if it is socially wasteful and productive otherwise. A principal screens an agent with multidimensional private information and quasilinear preferences that are additively separable across two components: a…
A seller investigates a buyer before setting prices, balancing the cost of acquiring information against the gain from tailoring the contract to the buyer's private type. The optimal signal is coarse: no matter how rich the type space, the…
We consider moral hazard problems where a principal has access to rich monitoring data about an agent's action. Rather than focusing on optimal contracts (which are known to in general be complicated), we characterize the optimal rate at…
How should a buyer design procurement mechanisms when suppliers' costs are unknown, and the buyer does not have a prior belief? We demonstrate that simple mechanisms - that share a constant fraction of the buyer utility with the seller -…
We study competition between firms that contract with consumers before the consumers fully learn their product preferences. In a Hotelling duopoly, firms screen consumers by offering menus of option contracts. We characterize the unique…
In a market with one safe and one risky asset, an investor with a long horizon, constant investment opportunities, and constant relative risk aversion trades with small proportional transaction costs. We derive explicit formulas for the…
A multi-product monopolist faces a buyer who is privately informed about his valuations for the goods. As is well-known, optimal mechanisms are in general complicated, while simple mechanisms -- such as pure bundling or separate sales --…
A principal contracts with an agent who sequentially searches over projects to generate a prize. The principal initially knows only one of the agent's available projects and evaluates a contract by its worst-case performance. We…
We consider a principal who wishes to screen an agent with \emph{discrete} types by offering a menu of \emph{discrete} quantities and \emph{discrete} transfers. We assume that the principal's valuation is discrete strictly concave and use a…
Climate adaptation could yield significant benefits. However, the uncertainty of which future climate scenarios will occur decreases the feasibility of proactively adapting. Climate adaptation projects could be underwritten by benefits paid…
A defining feature of digital goods is that replication and degradation are costless: once a high-quality good is produced, low-quality versions can be created and distributed at no additional cost. This paper studies quality-based…
A principal wishes to transact business with a multidimensional distribution of agents whose preferences are known only in the aggregate. Assuming a twist (= generalized Spence-Mirrlees single-crossing) hypothesis and that agents can choose…
An investor with constant relative risk aversion and an infinite planning horizon trades a risky and a safe asset with constant investment opportunities, in the presence of small transaction costs and a binding exogenous portfolio…
Funding is a cost to trading desks that they see as an input. Current FVA-related literature reflects this by also taking funding costs as an input, usually constant, and always risk-neutral. However, this funding curve is the output from a…
This paper examines the optimal contracts in a two-dimensional screening model where one dimension(group identity) is verifiable by agents but not falsifiable. A principal offers contracts to agents who differ in cost types and group…
Economic institutions often influence market outcomes not by directly controlling sellers' menus, but by shaping the market composition sellers face. We study the welfare effects of this upstream choice in a monopoly screening model. An…
Consider an actor making selection decisions using a series of classifiers, which we term a sequential screening process. The early stages filter out some applicants, and in the final stage an expensive but accurate test is applied to the…
We study a bilateral trade problem where a principal has private information that is revealed with delay, such as a seller who does not yet know her production cost. Postponing the contracting process incurs a costly delay, while early…
We study the role of regulatory inspections in a contract design problem in which a principal interacts separately with multiple agents. Each agent's hidden action includes a dimension that determines whether they undertake an extra costly…