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Abstract:
This paper discusses the origins of the transaction costs in side-contracting. In Tirole (1986)'s model of collusion with a risk averse supervisor, the optimal collusion-proof contract trades-off coalitional incentives against an insurance motive. We characterize the corresponding agency cost and allocative distortions. Identifying this contractual outcome with Tirole (1992)'s model of collusion with exogenous transaction costs provides foundations for those transaction costs. Transaction costs of collusion are stake-dependent, linked to the economic environment and function of the colluding agents' degrees of risk preferences. We provide several applications of this theory of transaction costs for organizational design (vertical integration, design of supervisory structures and side-contracting under uncertainty).

Supervision, collusion, stake-dependent transaction costs

Abstract:
This paper derives an Equivalence Principle between organizational forms of supervisory and productive activities. We consider an organization with an agent privately informed on his productivity and a risk averse supervisor getting signals on the agent's type. In a centralized organization, the principal can communicate and contract with both the supervisor and the agent. However, these two agents can collude against the principal. In a decentralized organization, the principal only communicates and contracts with the supervisor who in turn sub-contracts with the agent. We show that the two organizations achieve the same outcome. We discuss this equivalence and provide various comparative statics results to assess the efficiency of supervisory structures.

Supervision, soft information, collusion, delegation.

Abstract:
We build a unified theoretical framework to analyze the main incentive issues in Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) and the shape of optimal contracts in those contexts. We present a basic model of procurement in a multitask environment in which a risk-averse agent chooses unobservable efforts in cost reduction and quality improvement. We begin by studying the effect on incentives and risk transfer of bundling building and operation into a single contract, allowing for different assumptions on the contractual framework and the quality of the information held by the government. We then extend the basic model in several directions. We consider the factors that affect the optimal allocation of demand risk and their implications for the use of user charges and the choice of contract length. We study the relationship between the operator and its financiers and the impact of private finance.

We discuss the trade-off between incentive and flexibility in long-term PPP agreements and the dynamics of PPP contracts, including cost overruns. We also consider how the institutional environment, and specifically the risk of regulatory opportunism, affects contract design and incentives. We conclude with some policy implications on the desirability of PPPs.

Contracting out, public-private partnerships, public-service provision

Abstract:
In the context of common agency adverse-selection games we illustrate that the revelation principle cannot be applied to study equilibria of the multi-principal games. We then demonstrate that an extension of the taxation principle - what we term the delegation principle - can be used to characterize the set of all common agency equilibria.

Revelation Principle, Delegation Principle, Taxation Principle, Common Agency, Adverse Selection

Abstract:
Providing a realistic framework for assessing the efficiency of government intervention requires viewing the government not as a monolithic entity but as a number of different government bodies, each with its own constituencies and regulatory tools. Providing a more complete framework for assessing the efficiency of government intervention requires moving away from the idealistic perspective typically found in the normative approach to traditional public economics, contend Estache and Martimort. Such a move requires viewing the government not as a monolithic entity but as many different government bodies, each with its own constituency and regulatory tools. Not only is the multitiered government limited in its ability to commit, but interest groups influence the regulatory process and impose significant transaction costs on government interventions and on their outcome.

Estache and Martimort discuss the nature of those transaction costs and argue that the overall design of the government is the result of their minimization. Among the points they make in their conclusions:

Safeguards built into regulatory contracts sometimes reflect and sometimes imply transactions costs which influence, or should influence, the optimal tradeoff between rent and efficient in ways practitioners sometimes ignore.

Most of the literature on transaction costs arising from government failures would agree that to be sustainable, regulatory institutions should be independent, autonomous, and accountable. How these criteria are met is determined by the way transaction costs are minimized, which in turn drives the design of the regulatory framework.

In practice, for example, if there are commitment problems, short-term institutional contracts between players are more likely to ensure autonomy and independence. This affects the duration of the nomination of the regulators. Short-term contracts may be best, but contracts for regulators typically last four to eight years and are often renewable. The empirical debate about the design of regulators' jobs is a possible source of tension. Practitioners typically recommend choosing regulators based on professional rather than political criteria, but that may not be the best way to minimize regulatory capture. Professional experts are likely to come from the sector they are supposed to regulate and are likely to return to it sooner or later (as typically happens in developing countries). On the other hand, elected regulators are unlikely to be much more independent than professional regulators; they will simply represent different interests. Practitioners and theorists alike emphasize different sources of capture and agree that one way to deal with its risk is to make sure the selection process involves both executive and legislative branches.

This paper - a product of the Regulatory Reform and Private Enterprise Division, Economic Development Institute - is part of a larger effort in the institute to increase understanding of infrastructure regulation.

Government Organization, Regulation, Multiprincipal, Collusion

Abstract:
This paper characterizes the equilibrium sets of an intrinsic common agency game with direct externalities between principals both under complete and asymmetric information. Direct externalities arise when the contracting variable of one principal affects directly the other principal's payoff. Out-of-equilibrium messages are used by principals to precommit themselves to distort their strategic behavior. We characterize pure-strategy symmetric equilibria arising in such games under complete information and show their multiplicity. We then introduce asymmetric information to refine the set of feasible conjectures. We show that a unique equilibrium may be selected by conveniently perturbing the information structure. Both under complete and asymmetric information, we show that the equilibrium outputs of the intrinsic common agency game are also equilibrium outputs of the delegated common agency game, although the two games differ in terms of the distribution of surplus they involve.

Common Agency, Externality, Adverse Selection, Equilibrium Selection

Abstract:
This paper characterizes the equilibrium sets of an intrinsic common agency game with discrete types and direct revelation mechanisms. After presenting a general algorithm to find the pure-strategy equilibria of this game, we use it to characterize these equilibria when the two principals control activities which are complements in the agent's objective function. Some of those equilibria may entail allocative inefficiency. For the case of substitutes, we demonstrate non-existence of such equilibria with direct mechanisms, but existence may be obtained with indirect mechanisms. Finally, we relax the equilibrium concept and analyze quasi-equilibria. We show that existence is then guaranteed and characterize the corresponding allocations.

Abstract:
We study the problem of multiple financiers who want to extract income from a privately informed agent and design their financial contracts non-cooperatively. Our analysis reveals that the degree of coordination between financiers has strong implications for the shapes of financial contracts. Equity like contracts and excessive monitoring emerge when principals are able to delegate monitoring or verify each others monitoring efforts. When this is not possible, free riding in monitoring weakens the incentive to monitor high profit levels, so that flat payments, debt-like contracts and very low levels of monitoring appear.

monitoring, common agency, costly state verification

Abstract:
We study the problem of multiple principals who want to obtain income from a privately informed agent and design their contracts non-cooperatively. Our analysis reveals that the degree of coordination between principals has strong implications for the shapes of contracts and the amount of monitoring. Equity-like contracts and excessive monitoring emerge when principals are able to coordinate monitoring or verify each others' monitoring efforts. When this is not possible, free riding in monitoring weakens the incentive to monitor, so that flat payments, debt-like contracts and very low levels of monitoring appear. Free riding may be so strong that there may even be less monitoring than if the principals cooperated with each other, which shows that non-cooperative monitoring does not necessarily lead to excessive monitoring.

monitoring, common agency, costly state verification

Abstract:
When firms undertake activities which are environmentally risky, the divergence between social and private incentives to exert safety care requires public intervention. This control occurs both through ex ante regulation and ex post legal investigation. We delineate the respective scopes of those two kinds of monitoring when regulators and judges may not be benevolent. Separation between the ex ante and the ex post monitors of the firm helps to prevent capture. The likelihood of both ex ante and ex post inspections is higher under separation than under integration. This provides a rationale for the widespread institutional trend that has led to the separation of ex ante regulation from ex post prosecution. The robustness of this result is investigated in various extensions. Only when collusion is self-enforcing might it be possible that integration dominates separation.

Environmental risk, regulation, liability, exante and ex post investigations, integration and separation

Abstract:
When firms undertake activities which are environmentally risky, the divergence between social and private incentives to exert safety care requires public intervention. This control occurs both through ex ante regulation and ex post legal investigation. We delineate the respective scopes of those two kinds of monitoring when regulators and judges may not be benevolent. Separation between the ex ante and the ex post monitors of the firm helps to prevent capture. The likelihood of both ex ante and ex post inspections is higher under separation than under integration. This provides a rationale for the wide-spread institutional trend that has led to the separation of ex ante regulation from ex post prosecution. The robustness of this result is investigated in various extensions. Only when collusion is self-enforcing might it be possible that integration dominates separation.

Environmental risk, regulation, liability, ex ante and ex post investigations, integration and separation

Abstract:
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.

Contracting out, public-private partnerships, public-service provision

Abstract:
This paper analyzes whether the two tasks of building infrastructures which are socially useful and managing those assets should be bundled or not. When performances contracts can be written, both tasks should be performed altogether by the same firm when a better design of the infrastructure helps also to save on operating costs (positive externality). Otherwise (negative externality), tasks should be kept split apart and undertaken by different units. In incomplete contracting environments where the quality of the infrastructure may be hard to describe in advance, we isolate conditions under which either the traditional form of public provision of services or the more fashionable public-private partnership optimally emerges. The latter dominates when there is a positive externality but the private benefits from owning assets are small enough. Finally, we take a political economy perspective and study how incentive schemes are modified under the threat of capture of the decision-makers.

Public-private partnership, bundling/unbundling, agency costs, capture

Abstract:
This Paper proposes a theory of the optimal organization of delegated expertise. For incentive purposes, a principal should reward an expert when their recommendation is confirmed either by the facts or by other experts' recommendations. With a single expert, we show that the agency costs of delegated expertise exhibit diseconomies of scale. Possible organizational responses to this problem include basing decisions on a less than optimal amount of information, and relying on multiple experts. We analyze the source of gains from having multiple experts in different contracting environments corresponding to different nexi of collusion between the principal and/or the experts.

Expertise, organization, collusion

Abstract:
This paper surveys what can be learned from recent advances in the incomplete contract literature to understand how public goods are or should be provided. The paper starts with a section on the full information case that presents and discusses the classical Samuelson condition on the optimal provision of public goods. The rest of the paper presents results under asymmetric information. It is constituted of two main parts. In the first one, the social planner has complete contracting ability. We discuss the basic setting and assumptions of this comprehensive contracting approach and study the trade-offs it generates. The second part of the paper is devoted to the study of contracting incompleteness. Such incompleteness can emerge from various sources, which we present and discuss. We then study the case of a politically chosen decision-maker and the consequences of its inability to commit for more than one period and of the ability for individuals to form groups. Finally, we address the problem of the choice between public and private forms of public good provision. The concluding section summarizes the main policy lessons.

Asymmetric information, Incomplete contracts, Public goods

Abstract:
This paper surveys what can be learned from recent advances in the incomplete contract literature to understand how public goods are or should be provided. The paper starts with a section on the full information case that presents and discusses the classical Samuelson condition on the optimal provision of public goods. The rest of the paper presents results under asymmetric information. It is constituted of two main parts. In the first one, the social planner has complete contracting ability. We discuss the basic setting and assumptions of this comprehensive contracting approach and study the trade-offs it generates. The second part of the paper is devoted to the study of contracting incompleteness. Such incompleteness can emerge from various sources, which we present and discuss. We then study the case of a politically chosen decision-maker and the consequences of its inability to commit for more than one period and of the ability for individuals to form groups. Finally, we address the problem of the choice between public and private forms of public good provision. The concluding section summarizes the main policy lessons.

Abstract:
This paper analyses the link between the internal organization of the firm and the growth process. We present a Schumpeterian growth model in which monopoly firms face agency costs due to collusion between managers inside the organization. These costs affect incentives to invest and the rate of innovation in the economy. When collusion is self-enforcing, higher growth and more creative destruction shortens in turn the time horizon of colluding agents in the organization and makes internal collusion more difficult to sustain. We analyse this two-way mechanism between growth and agency problems and show how the transaction costs of side-contracting within the firm and the growth rate of the economy are simultaneously derived.

Abstract:
We propose a theory of supervision with endogenous transaction costs. A principal delegates part of his authority to a supervisor who can acquire soft information about an agent's productivity. If the supervisor were risk-neutral, the principal would simply make the better informed supervisor residual claimant for the hierarchy's profit. Under risk-aversion, the optimal contract trades-off the supervisor's incentives to reveal his information with an insurance motive. This contract can be identified with the one obtained in a simple hard information model of hierarchical collusion with exogenous transaction costs. Now, transaction costs are endogenous and depend on the collusion stake, the accuracy of the supervisory technology and the supervisor's degree of risk-aversion. We then discuss various implications of the model for the design and management of organisations.

Abstract:
This Paper analyzes the impact of asymmetric information within countries on the pattern of international trade. We append to the standard 2x2 Heckscher-Ohlin model of a small economy a continuum of sectors producing intermediate non-tradable goods. Those goods are produced by monopolies having private information on their technologies. With asymmetric information and under optimal regulation, production in these sectors is inefficiently low. The small open country is relatively richer in the factor that is more intensively used by the privately informed sectors. Asymmetric information can reverse the country's pattern of comparative advantages. Due to the existence of information rents in these sectors, the economy does not only receive the standard factor endowments (capital and labor) but also an 'informational endowment' which boosts demand for tradable goods. Free trade with optimal regulation is Pareto dominated by autarky with optimal regulation when, under asymmetric information, there is a reversal of comparative advantages. This result suggests that optimal 'behind-the-border' regulatory policies cannot be considered separately from trade policy instruments, when regulation is characterized by serious problems of asymmetric information.

Abstract:
No abstract is available for this paper.

Abstract:
We analyze the design of incentive mechanisms for the provision of transnational public goods under asymmetric information. Transnational public goods are infrastructures that no single country can afford to build for itself. We show that the external constraints imposed by this mechanism may affect consumption, pricing and the true redistributive concerns of local governments. We characterize the corresponding distortions. We also discuss the impact of the preferences for redistribution of the international agency in charge of designing the mechanism and the role of its ability to enforce that mechanism.

Transnational public goods, incentive mechanisms

Abstract:
Regulatory independence from political control enlarges the collusive opportunities between regulators and interest groups. This is costly for current politicians because deterring capture becomes harder. However, independence also constrains future governments. Whenever future and current governments have different preferences, independence creates a stabilization effect as both majorities find it more difficult to move policies toward their ideal points. Since deterring collusion links current and future policies, the current majority can strategically affect the choices of a future government: a commitment effect. We compare those effects and draw some conclusions for the design of the agency's legal status.

Abstract:
We show that the separation of powers in regulation may act as a commitment against the threat of regulatory capture. Splitting regulatory tasks and monitoring technologies among several non-benevolent regulators may reduce their discretion in engaging in socially wasteful activities. When regulators make collusive offers that are accepted by the agent whatever his characteristics, competition between regulators relaxes collusion-proofness constraints and improves social welfare. This result is robust to different specifications of the agent's preferences and to the timing of the game as long as one insists on safe side-contracting offers. We also discuss how separation affects both allocative efficiency and the distribution of rents in the economy.

Abstract:
What are the costs and benefits of exclusive dealing and why do manufacturers choose to organize their retailing markets in this way instead of taking a common retailer? This article traces back the benefits of this organizational form of distribution to the provision of incentives in a setting of competing manufacturer-retailer hierarchies under adverse selection. It first develops a theoretical model that studies competition between hierarchies under the assumption of secret wholesale contracts. Second, it analyzes a game of choice of retailing channels between rival manufacturers. Depending on the extent of the adverse selection problem and on the complementarity or substitutability of their brands, manufacturers prefer to use either a common or an exclusive retailer.

Abstract:
We discuss the internal organization of the firm, arguing that the comparison between a centralized and a decentralized hierarchical organization should be cast in terms of the agency costs associated with the different side-contracting games that agents play in these organizations. In our model, with no limits on communication between the agents and the principal (complete contracting), collusion is not an issue in a centralized organization. Centralization always dominates (at least weakly) delegation. With limits on communication (incomplete contracting), collusion may have some bite under centralization. Limits on communication introduce an anonymity condition on the contract, creating a conflict between participation and coalition incentive constraints under centralization. By shifting the bargaining power in the side-contracting stage, delegation is non-anonymous and asymmetric by design. This conflict is then avoided or diminished depending on the exact timing of the delegation game.