Fiscal rules and discretion under persistent shocks

This paper studies the optimal level of discretion in policymaking. We consider a fiscal policy model where the government has time-inconsistent preferences with a present-bias towards public spending. The government chooses a fiscal rule to trade off its desire to commit to not overspend against its desire to have flexibility to react to privately observed shocks to the value of spending. We analyze the optimal fiscal rule when the shocks are persistent. Unlike under i.i.d: shocks, we show that the ex-ante optimal rule is not sequentially optimal, as it provides dynamic incentives. The ex-ante optimal rule exhibits history dependence, with high shocks leading to an erosion of future fiscal discipline compared to low shocks, which lead to the reinstatement of discipline. The implied policy distortions oscillate over time given a sequence of high shocks, and can force the government to accumulate maximal debt and become immiserated in the long run

Distributional effects of crises : the role of financial transfers

Financial crises affect income distribution by way of different channels. The authors argue that financial transfers are an important channel which has been overlooked by the literature. They study the role of financial transfers by analyzing some of the most severe Latin American crises during the past decades (Chile 1981-83, Mexico 1994-95, Ecuador 1998-2000, Argentina 2001-02, and Uruguay 2002). First, the authors investigate transfers to the financial sector-those from nonparticipants to participants of the financial sector. Second, they explore who receives these financial transfers by identifying the winners and losers within the financial sector. Their analysis suggests that financial transfers during crises are large and expected to increase income inequality.Financial Intermediation,Banks&Banking Reform,Economic Theory&Research,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Financial Crisis Management&Restructuring,Banks&Banking Reform,Financial Crisis Management&Restructuring,Financial Intermediation,Financial Economics,Economic Theory&Research

Managerial attention and worker performance

We present a novel theory of the employment relationship. A manager can invest in attention technology to recognize good worker performance. The technology may break and is costly to replace. We show that as time passes without recognition, the worker’s belief about the manager’s technology worsens and his effort declines. The manager responds by investing, but this investment is insufficient to stop the decline in effort and eventually becomes decreasing. The relationship therefore continues deteriorating, and a return to high performance becomes increasingly unlikely. These deteriorating dynamics do not arise when recognition is of bad performance or independent of effort

Optimal contracts for experimentation

This paper studies a model of long-term contracting for experimentation. We consider a principal-agent relationship with adverse selection on the agent’s ability, dynamic moral hazard, and private learning about project quality. We find that each of these elements plays an essential role in structuring dynamic incentives, and it is only their interaction that generally precludes efficiency. Our model permits an explicit characterization of optimal contracts

Contests for experimentation

We study contests for innovation with learning about the innovation’s feasibility and opponents’ outcomes. We characterize contests that maximize innovation when the designer chooses a prize-sharing scheme and a disclosure policy. A “public winnertakes-all contest” dominates public contests—where any success is immediately disclosed—with any other prize-sharing scheme as well as winner-takes-all contests with any other disclosure policy. Yet, jointly modifying prize sharing and disclosure can increase innovation. In a broad class of mechanisms, it is optimal to share the prize with disclosure following a certain number of successes; under simple conditions, a “hidden equal-sharing” contest is optimal

Raising Capital from Heterogeneous Investors

A firm raises capital from multiple investors to fund a project. The project succeeds only if the capital raised exceeds a stochastic threshold, and the firm offers payments contingent on success. We study the firm's optimal unique-implementation scheme, namely the scheme that guarantees the firm the maximum payoff. This scheme treats investors differently based on size. We show that if the distribution of the investment threshold is log-concave, larger investors receive higher net returns than smaller investors. Moreover, higher dispersion in investor size increases the firm's payoff. Our analysis highlights strategic risk as an important potential driver of inequality

Monitoring Teams

A principal incentivizes a group of agents to work by choosing a monitoring structure and a scheme of performance-contingent rewards. The monitoring structure partitions the set of agents into monitoring teams, each delivering a signal of joint performance. We show that unlike under partial implementation, the principal always exhausts her monitoring capacity to optimally implement work as a unique outcome. Optimal monitoring teams are homogeneous between them: equally sized and with agents allocated in an anti-assortative fashion. Higher-effort-cost agents receive lower rents, and they tend to be monitored more closely than lower-effort-cost agents when the principal's allocation is constrained

Raising Capital from Heterogeneous Investors

A rm raises capital from multiple investors to fund a project. The project succeeds only if the capital raised exceeds a stochastic threshold, and the rm offers payments contingent on success. We study the rm's optimal unique-implementation scheme, namely the scheme that guarantees the rm the maximum payoff. This scheme pays investors differential net returns (per unit of capital) depending on the size of their investments. We show that if the distribution of the investment threshold is log-concave, larger investors receive higher net returns than smaller investors. Moreover, higher dispersion in investor size increases the rm's payoff. Our analysis highlights strategic risk as an important potential driver of inequality

Contests for Experimentation

We study the design of contests for specific innovations when there is learning: contestants’ beliefs dynamically evolve about both the innovation’s feasibility and opponents’ success. Our model builds on exponential-bandit experimentation. We characterize contests that maximize the probability of innovation when the designer chooses how to allocate a prize and what information to disclose over time about contestants’ successes. A “public winner-takes-all contest” dominates public contests—those where any success is immediately disclosed—with any other prize-sharing scheme as well as winner-takes-all contests with any other disclosure policy. Yet, it is often optimal to use a “hidden equal-sharing contest”