Download or read book The Theory of Incentives written by Jean-Jacques Laffont and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-12-27 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Economics has much to do with incentives--not least, incentives to work hard, to produce quality products, to study, to invest, and to save. Although Adam Smith amply confirmed this more than two hundred years ago in his analysis of sharecropping contracts, only in recent decades has a theory begun to emerge to place the topic at the heart of economic thinking. In this book, Jean-Jacques Laffont and David Martimort present the most thorough yet accessible introduction to incentives theory to date. Central to this theory is a simple question as pivotal to modern-day management as it is to economics research: What makes people act in a particular way in an economic or business situation? In seeking an answer, the authors provide the methodological tools to design institutions that can ensure good incentives for economic agents. This book focuses on the principal-agent model, the "simple" situation where a principal, or company, delegates a task to a single agent through a contract--the essence of management and contract theory. How does the owner or manager of a firm align the objectives of its various members to maximize profits? Following a brief historical overview showing how the problem of incentives has come to the fore in the past two centuries, the authors devote the bulk of their work to exploring principal-agent models and various extensions thereof in light of three types of information problems: adverse selection, moral hazard, and non-verifiability. Offering an unprecedented look at a subject vital to industrial organization, labor economics, and behavioral economics, this book is set to become the definitive resource for students, researchers, and others who might find themselves pondering what contracts, and the incentives they embody, are really all about.

Download or read book Allocation Information and Markets written by John Eatwell and published by Springer. This book was released on 1989-09-21 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an extract from the 4-volume dictionary of economics, a reference book which aims to define the subject of economics today. 1300 subject entries in the complete work cover the broad themes of economic theory. This volume concentrates on the topic of allocation information and markets.

Download or read book Moral Hazard in Health Insurance written by Amy Finkelstein and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2014-12-02 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Addressing the challenge of covering heath care expenses—while minimizing economic risks. Moral hazard—the tendency to change behavior when the cost of that behavior will be borne by others—is a particularly tricky question when considering health care. Kenneth J. Arrow’s seminal 1963 paper on this topic (included in this volume) was one of the first to explore the implication of moral hazard for health care, and Amy Finkelstein—recognized as one of the world’s foremost experts on the topic—here examines this issue in the context of contemporary American health care policy. Drawing on research from both the original RAND Health Insurance Experiment and her own research, including a 2008 Health Insurance Experiment in Oregon, Finkelstein presents compelling evidence that health insurance does indeed affect medical spending and encourages policy solutions that acknowledge and account for this. The volume also features commentaries and insights from other renowned economists, including an introduction by Joseph P. Newhouse that provides context for the discussion, a commentary from Jonathan Gruber that considers provider-side moral hazard, and reflections from Joseph E. Stiglitz and Kenneth J. Arrow. “Reads like a fireside chat among a group of distinguished, articulate health economists.” —Choice

Download or read book Computational Complexity written by Robert A. Meyers and published by Springer. This book was released on 2011-10-19 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Complex systems are systems that comprise many interacting parts with the ability to generate a new quality of collective behavior through self-organization, e.g. the spontaneous formation of temporal, spatial or functional structures. These systems are often characterized by extreme sensitivity to initial conditions as well as emergent behavior that are not readily predictable or even completely deterministic. The recognition that the collective behavior of the whole system cannot be simply inferred from an understanding of the behavior of the individual components has led to the development of numerous sophisticated new computational and modeling tools with applications to a wide range of scientific, engineering, and societal phenomena. Computational Complexity: Theory, Techniques and Applications presents a detailed and integrated view of the theoretical basis, computational methods, and state-of-the-art approaches to investigating and modeling of inherently difficult problems whose solution requires extensive resources approaching the practical limits of present-day computer systems. This comprehensive and authoritative reference examines key components of computational complexity, including cellular automata, graph theory, data mining, granular computing, soft computing, wavelets, and more.

Download or read book Intermediate Microeconomics written by Patrick M. Emerson and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Contract Theory written by Patrick Bolton and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2004-12-10 with total page 746 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive introduction to contract theory, emphasizing common themes and methodologies as well as applications in key areas. Despite the vast research literature on topics relating to contract theory, only a few of the field's core ideas are covered in microeconomics textbooks. This long-awaited book fills the need for a comprehensive textbook on contract theory suitable for use at the graduate and advanced undergraduate levels. It covers the areas of agency theory, information economics, and organization theory, highlighting common themes and methodologies and presenting the main ideas in an accessible way. It also presents many applications in all areas of economics, especially labor economics, industrial organization, and corporate finance. The book emphasizes applications rather than general theorems while providing self-contained, intuitive treatment of the simple models analyzed. In this way, it can also serve as a reference for researchers interested in building contract-theoretic models in applied contexts.The book covers all the major topics in contract theory taught in most graduate courses. It begins by discussing such basic ideas in incentive and information theory as screening, signaling, and moral hazard. Subsequent sections treat multilateral contracting with private information or hidden actions, covering auction theory, bilateral trade under private information, and the theory of the internal organization of firms; long-term contracts with private information or hidden actions; and incomplete contracts, the theory of ownership and control, and contracting with externalities. Each chapter ends with a guide to the relevant literature. Exercises appear in a separate chapter at the end of the book.

Download or read book The Theory of Corporate Finance written by Jean Tirole and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2010-08-26 with total page 657 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Magnificent."—The Economist From the Nobel Prize–winning economist, a groundbreaking and comprehensive account of corporate finance Recent decades have seen great theoretical and empirical advances in the field of corporate finance. Whereas once the subject addressed mainly the financing of corporations—equity, debt, and valuation—today it also embraces crucial issues of governance, liquidity, risk management, relationships between banks and corporations, and the macroeconomic impact of corporations. However, this progress has left in its wake a jumbled array of concepts and models that students are often hard put to make sense of. Here, one of the world's leading economists offers a lucid, unified, and comprehensive introduction to modern corporate finance theory. Jean Tirole builds his landmark book around a single model, using an incentive or contract theory approach. Filling a major gap in the field, The Theory of Corporate Finance is an indispensable resource for graduate and advanced undergraduate students as well as researchers of corporate finance, industrial organization, political economy, development, and macroeconomics. Tirole conveys the organizing principles that structure the analysis of today's key management and public policy issues, such as the reform of corporate governance and auditing; the role of private equity, financial markets, and takeovers; the efficient determination of leverage, dividends, liquidity, and risk management; and the design of managerial incentive packages. He weaves empirical studies into the book's theoretical analysis. And he places the corporation in its broader environment, both microeconomic and macroeconomic, and examines the two-way interaction between the corporate environment and institutions. Setting a new milestone in the field, The Theory of Corporate Finance will be the authoritative text for years to come.

Download or read book A Theory of Incentives in Procurement and Regulation written by Jean-Jacques Laffont and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 746 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on their work in the application of principal-agent theory to questions of regulation, Laffont and Tirole develop a synthetic approach to this field, focusing on the regulation of natural monopolies such as military contractors, utility companies and transportation authorities.

Download or read book Handbook of Insurance written by Georges Dionne and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 980 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1970's, the research agenda in insurance was dominated by optimal insurance coverage, security design, and equilibrium under conditions of imperfect information. The 1980's saw a growth of theoretical developments including non-expected utility, price volatility, retention capacity, the pricing and design of insurance contracts in the presence of multiple risks, and the liability insurance crisis. The empirical study of information problems, financial derivatives, and large losses due to catastrophic events dominated the research agenda in the 1990's. The Handbook of Insurance provides a single reference source on insurance for professors, researchers, graduate students, regulators, consultants, and practitioners, that reviews the research developments in insurance and its related fields that have occurred over the last thirty years. The book starts with the history and foundations of insurance theory and moves on to review asymmetric information, risk management and insurance pricing, and the industrial organization of insurance markets. The book ends with life insurance, pensions, and economic security. Each chapter has been written by a leading authority in insurance, all contributions have been peer reviewed, and each chapter can be read independently of the others.

Download or read book Robust Mechanism Design written by Dirk Bergemann and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2012 with total page 471 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Foreword by Eric Maskin (Nobel Laureate in Economics, 2007)This volume brings together the collected contributions on the theme of robust mechanism design and robust implementation that Dirk Bergemann and Stephen Morris have been working on for the past decade. The collection is preceded by a comprehensive introductory essay, specifically written for this volume with the aim of providing the readers with an overview of the research agenda pursued in the collected papers.The introduction selectively presents the main results of the papers, and attempts to illustrate many of them in terms of a common and canonical example, namely a single unit auction with interdependent values. It is our hope that the use of this example facilitates the presentation of the results and that it brings the main insights within the context of an important economic mechanism, namely the generalized second price auction.

Download or read book Contract Theory in Continuous Time Models written by Jakša Cvitanic and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-09-26 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years there has been a significant increase of interest in continuous-time Principal-Agent models, or contract theory, and their applications. Continuous-time models provide a powerful and elegant framework for solving stochastic optimization problems of finding the optimal contracts between two parties, under various assumptions on the information they have access to, and the effect they have on the underlying "profit/loss" values. This monograph surveys recent results of the theory in a systematic way, using the approach of the so-called Stochastic Maximum Principle, in models driven by Brownian Motion. Optimal contracts are characterized via a system of Forward-Backward Stochastic Differential Equations. In a number of interesting special cases these can be solved explicitly, enabling derivation of many qualitative economic conclusions.

Download or read book The Microeconomics of Insurance written by Ray Rees and published by Now Publishers Inc. This book was released on 2008 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this relatively short survey, we present the core elements of the microeconomic analysis of insurance markets at a level suitable for senior undergraduate and graduate economics students. The aim of this analysis is to understand how insurance markets work, what their fundamental economic functions are, and how efficiently they may be expected to carry these out.

Download or read book Social Organization and Mechanism Design written by Claude d' Aspremont and published by De Boeck Supérieur. This book was released on 1999 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By presenting a collection of contributions by leading experts, this book illustrates the variety of issues that the discipline of "mechanism design", as a branch of game theory, is capable of dealing with : voting rules, trial procedures, public good production, cost-sharing, monopolistic regulation, bequest function, etc. However, the book illustrates also the fundamental unity of the basic questions : information gathering, communication, individual as well as coalitional strategic and dynamic behavior.

Download or read book Encyclopedia of Creativity Invention Innovation and Entrepreneurship written by and published by Springer. This book was released on 2020-07-30 with total page 2500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second edition of this exhaustive work (ECIIE) comprehensively covers the broad spectrum of topics relating to the process of creativity and innovation, from a wide variety of perspectives (e.g., economics, management, psychology, anthropology, policy, technology, education, the arts) and modes (individual, organization, industry, nation, region). This edition includes some 400 topical entries, definitions of key terms and concepts and review essays, from a global array of more than 250 researchers, business executives, policymakers, and artists, illuminating the many facets of creativity and innovation and highlighting their relationships to such universal concepts as knowledge management, economic opportunity, and sustainability. Entries feature description of key concepts and definition of terms, full-color illustrations, case examples, future directions for research and application, synonyms and cross-references and bibliographic references.

Download or read book Contemporary Financial Intermediation written by Stuart I. Greenbaum and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2019-05-14 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary Financial Intermediation, 4th Edition by Greenbaum, Thakor, and Boot continues to offer a distinctive approach to the study of financial markets and institutions by presenting an integrated portrait that puts information and economic reasoning at the core. Instead of primarily naming and describing markets, regulations, and institutions as is common, Contemporary Financial Intermediation explores the subtlety, plasticity and fragility of financial institutions and credit markets. In this new edition every chapter has been updated and pedagogical supplements have been enhanced. For the financial sector, the best preprofessional training explains the reasons why markets, institutions, and regulators evolve they do, why we suffer recurring financial crises occur and how we typically react to them. Our textbook demands more in terms of quantitative skills and analysis, but its ability to teach about the forces shaping the financial world is unmatched. - Updates and expands a legacy title in a valuable field - Holds a prominent position in a growing portfolio of finance textbooks - Teaches tactics on how to recognize and forecast fluctuations in financial markets

Download or read book Asymmetric Information in Financial Markets written by Ricardo N. Bebczuk and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-08-21 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Asymmetric information (the fact that borrowers have better information than their lenders) and its theoretical and practical evidence now forms part of the basic tool kit of every financial economist. It is a phenomenon that has major implications for a number of economic and financial issues ranging from both micro and macroeconomic level - corporate debt, investment and dividend policies, the depth and duration of business cycles, the rate of long term economic growth - to the origin of financial and international crises. Asymmetric Information in Financial Markets aims to explain this concept in an accessible way, without jargon and by reducing mathematical complexity. Using elementary algebra and statistics, graphs, and convincing real-world evidence, the author explores the foundations of the problems posed by asymmetries of information in a refreshingly accessible and intuitive way.

Download or read book Practice Exercises for Advanced Microeconomic Theory written by Felix Munoz-Garcia and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2017-08-25 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Solutions and detailed explanations for odd-numbered end-of-chapter exercises (107 problems) in Felix Muñoz-Garcia's Advanced Microeconomic Theory. Felix Muñoz-Garcia's Advanced Microeconomic Theory provides examples and exercises that help students understand how to apply theoretical models and offers tools for approaching similar problems on their own. This workbook provides solutions and step-by-step explanations for the odd-numbered exercises (107 problems in total). The answer key and detailed explanations emphasize the economic intuition behind the mathematical assumptions and results and, in combination with the textbook, enable students to improve both their theoretical and practical preparation.