Social Status

A common feature of recent growth models is the existence of externalities associated with human capital. Each worker, in choosing his level of schooling or occupation, ignores the impact of his choie on future generations. Thus, in general, the level of investment in human capital is suboptimal. One possible corrective mechanism is to reward investment in human capital with social status. As recognized by sociologists, the occupational social status is an important factor in occupational choice. The paper investigates the implications of social rewards onthe edistribution of talents in society and consequently on the process of economic growth. We consider two sources of heterogeneity among workers: non wage income and ability. We find that the thrive for status may be counter productive, inducing an inefficient allocation of talent. A greater emphasis on status may induce the "wrong" individuals i.e. those with low ability and high wealth to acquire schooling, causing workers with high ability but low wealth to leave the growth enhancing occupations. This crowding ou;effect, taken alone, discourages growth. In general, growth may be enhanced by an increase in the number of workers who invest in education. However, the inefficiency in the allocation of talent persists.

Unobserved Delegation

The paper describes situations where commitment via delegation is beneficial, even when the delegation is unobservable and the players have the option to play the game themselves. The potentiual for such benefits depends on the type of delegation, incentive versus instructive, the possibility of repetition, and the probability of observability.

The Effects of Insider Trading on Insiders' Choice Among Risky Investment Projects

This paper studies certain effects of insider trading on the principal-agent problem in corporations. Specifically, we focus on insiders' choice among investment projects. Other things equal, insider trading leads insiders to choose riskier investment projects, because increased volatility of results enables insiders to make greater trading profits if they learn these results in advance of the market. This effect might or might not be beneficial, however, because insiders' risk-aversion pulls them toward a conservative investment policy. We identify and compare insiders' choices of projects with insider trading and those without such trading. We also study the optimal contract design with insider trading and without such trading, thus identifying the effects that allowing such trading has on other elements of insiders' compensation. Using these results, we identify the conditions under which insider trading increases or decreases corporate value by affecting the choice of projects with uncertain returns .