Essays on institutional persistence, contract structure, and authority

This thesis is a collection of essays that uses theoretical and experimental methods to explore institutional persistence, contract structure, and authority. Chapter One studies the informational and efficiency properties of institutions that form to reduce moral hazard. While in the short run such mechanisms may be optimal, in the long run inefficient institutions may persist because information about changes in the underlying environment is lost. Using experimental and theoretical methods, it analyzes a market with high quality and low quality products that are indistinguishable without a costly certification process. Sellers in the market make endogenous production decisions and are heterogeneous in their levels of moral hazard leading to two possible equilibria-non-certifying and certifying-that vary in both efficiency and information about the underlying environment. The certifying equilibrium, which does not carry information about changes in the distribution of sellers, does not adjust when the underlying environment changes, perpetuating a market structure that makes all market participants weakly worse off. Chapter Two studies how changes in contract structure may help preserve antiquities. Most countries prohibit the export of certain antiquities. This practice often leads to illegal excavation and looting for the black market, which damages objects and destroys important aspects of the archaeological record. Chapter Two argues that many of the goals for export bans could be better accomplished through the use of long-term leases which would raise revenue for the country of origin while preserving national long-term ownership rights. Chapter Three uses experiments to study how control rights are distributed in a setting with incentive conflicts.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Economics.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2008

Author dc:creator

• Wilkening, Tom S

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Sergei Izmalkov and Abhijit Banerjee.

• Economics.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/43780

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/43780