The theory of incentives applied to the transport sector

Building upon Iossa and Martimort (2008), we study the main incentive issues and the form of optimal contracts for Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) in transports. We present a basic model of procurement in a multitask environment in which a risk-averse firm chooses unobservable efforts in infrastructure and service quality. We begin by analyzing the effect on incentives and risk transfer of bundling building and operation into a single contract. We consider the factors that affect the optimal allocation of demand risk and their implications for the choice of contract length. We discuss the dynamics of PPP contracts and how the risk of regulatory opportunism affects contract design and incentives

Optimism and lender liability in the consumer credit market

Credit purchases of consumer goods are commonly made upon terms governed by an agreement between the lender and the seller. This type of purchase is generally subject to a legal principle of joint responsibility under which the lender and the seller are jointly liable to the consumer for breach of the sale contract by the seller. We study the rationale for this principle in situations where market failure arises because consumers underestimate the risk of product failure - for example due to seller misrepresentation - and it is difficult to enforce seller responsibility. We show that joint responsibility increases welfare and reduces the incentives of sellers to misrepresent the quality of their products

Decision rules and information provision: monitoring versus manipulation

The paper focuses on the organization of institutions designed to resolve disputes between two parties, when some information is not veri…able and decision makers may have vested preferences. It shows that the choice of how much discretional power to grant to the decision maker and who provides the information are intrinsically related. Direct involvement of the interested parties in the supply of information enhances monitoring over the decision maker, although at the cost of higher manipulation. Thus, it is desirable when the decision maker is granted high discretion. On the contrary, when the decision maker has limited discretional power, information provision is better assigned to an agent with no direct stake. The analysis helps to rationalize some organizational arrangements that are commonly observed in the context of judicial and antitrust decision-makin

Competition Among Universities and the Emergence of the Elite Institution

We consider an environment where two education institutions compete by selecting the proportion of their funding devoted to teaching and research and the criteria for admission for their students, and where students choose whether and where to attend university. We study the relationship between the cost incurred by students for attending a university located away from their home town and the equilibrium con…guration that emerges in the game played by the universities. Symmetric equilibria, where universities choose the same admission standard, only exist when the mobility cost is high; when the mobility cost is very low, there is no pure strategy equilibrium. For intermediate values of the mobility cost, only asymmetric equilibria may exist; the …nal section of the paper provides an example where asymmetric equilibria do indeed exist for a plausible and robust set of parameters

Building and Managing Facilities for Public Services

We model public-private partnerships in building and managing facilities for the provision of public services. In particular, we analyze both the desirability of bundling the building and management operations, and the optimal allocation of ownership between the public sector and private firms. When a positive externality exists across stages of production, bundling is always optimal; but unbundling tends to be preferred when the externality is negative. Whether public ownership is preferred to private ownership depends on the extent of the externality, the market value of the facility and the effect of the firms' investments on social benefits.

The Theory of Incentives Applied to the Transport Sector

Building upon Iossa and Martimort (2008), we study the main incentive issues and the form of optimal contracts for Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) in transports. We present a basic model of procurement in a multitask environment in which a risk-averse firm chooses unobservable efforts in infrastructure and service quality. We begin by analyzing the effect on incentives and risk transfer of bunding building and operation into a single contract. We consider the factors that affect the optimal allocation of demand risk and their implications for the choice of contract length. We discuss the dynamics of PPP contracts and how the risk of regulatory opportunism affects design and incentives.

Reputational concerns in arbitration: Decision bias and information acquisition

We analyze how reputational concerns of arbitrators affect the quality of their decision process, in particular, information acquisition and bias. We assume that arbitrators differ in their ability to observe the state of the world and that information acquisition is costly and unobservable. We show that reputational concerns increase incentives for information acquisition but may induce arbitrators to bias their decisions towards one party in the dispute. This decision bias is greater when the dispute proceedings are confidential rather than public. Building on these results, we study the circumstances under which the parties to a contract choose to employ arbitration rather than litigation in court to resolve their disputes

Overoptimism and Lender Liability in the Consumer Credit Market

Credit purchases of consumer goods are commonly made upon terms governed by an agreement between the lender and the seller. This type of purchase is generally subject to a legal principle of joint responsibility under which the lender and the seller are jointly liable to the consumer for breach of the sale contract by the seller. We study the rationale for this principle in situations where market failure arises because consumers under estimate the risk of product failure - for example due to selle rmisrepresentation - and it is difficult to enforce seller responsibility. We show that joint responsibility increases welfare and reduces the incentives of sellers to misrepresent the quality of their products.consumer credit, lender liability, misrepresentation, overoptimism, product failure