In environments where a principal contracts with many agents who each execute numerous independent tasks, it is often infeasible to evaluate an agent’s performance on all tasks. Incentives under moral hazard are instead provided by monitoring only a subset of randomly selected tasks. We characterize optimal dynamic contracts implemented with this type of random monitoring technology. We conside...

Consumers have shown a willingness to pay a premium for products labeled as “Fair Trade,” and to prefer retailers that are seen as more generous to their suppliers/employees. A fair trade product is essentially a bundle of a base product and a donation to the supplier (e.g., a coffee farmer). An altruistic rational consumer will only choose this bundle if doing so is less expensive than buying ...

I consider a repeated principal-agent setting in which the agent repeatedly chooses between hidden “long-term” and “short-term” actions. Relative to the long-term action, the short-term action boosts output today but hurts output tomorrow. The optimal contract inducing long-term actions provides a fresh perspective on upward sloping pay scales, severance pay and high-watermark contracts. The my...

The cytochrome b5 domain containing 2 (CYB5D2; Neuferricin) protein has been reported to bind heme, however, the critical residues responsible for heme-binding are undefined. Furthermore, the relationship between heme-binding and CYB5D2-mediated intracellular functions remains unknown. Previous studies examining heme-binding in two cytochrome b5 heme-binding domain-containing proteins, damage-a...

We provide su¢ cient conditions for the validity of the …rst-order approach for two-period dynamic moral hazard problems where the agent can save and borrow secretly. The …rst-order approach is valid if the following conditions hold: i) the agent has nonincreasing absolute risk aversion utility (NIARA), ii) the output technology has monotone likelihood ratios (MLR), and iii) the distribution fu...

I study the optimal supply of ‡exible commitment devices to people who value both commitment and ‡exibility, and whose preferences exhibit varying degrees of time inconsistency. I …nd that, if time inconsistency is observable, then both a monopolist and a planner supply devices that enable each person to commit to the e¢ cient level of ‡exibility. If instead time inconsistency is unobservable, ...

Plants are often exposed to saturating light conditions, which can lead to oxidative stress. The carotenoid zeaxanthin, synthesized from violaxanthin by Violaxanthin De-Epoxidase (VDE) plays a major role in the protection from excess illumination. VDE activation is triggered by a pH reduction in the thylakoids lumen occurring under saturating light. In this work the mechanism of the VDE activat...

This paper investigates banks’ corporate social responsibility. The credit market is composed of two sectors: one for standard and one for ethical projects. Since ethical banks are committed to investing in ethical projects, standard and ethical banks compete in the market for ethical projects. The latter have also a social profitability, but a lower expected revenue with respect to standard on...

Increased attention to the issue of aid effectiveness has sparked a flurry of empirical studies attempting to measure the macro-level impact of aid flows on the performances of developing countries. These studies yield ambiguous and even contradictory results and one possible source of confusion is the fact that they are not grounded in solid theorizing. This paper tries to remedy this lacuna b...