Working Papers
Credible Deadlines (Job market paper)
Abstract: This paper studies a principal–agent relationship in which success on a project requires both parties to continue working on it for an unknown amount of time. The agent, who can quit at any time, is better informed about the project's likely duration and is more motivated to continue than the principal, who sets a deadline. When the principal has commitment power, the optimal deadline balances the cost of cutting short ongoing projects against the benefit of screening out weaker projects. When the principal lacks commitment power, she may be tempted to extend the deadline ex post, rendering it non-credible. The paper examines how the nature of this credibility problem depends on the project technology and the agent's information, and it compares optimal deadlines when the principal has commitment power to optimal "credible" deadlines.
Abstract: A seller offers a service to consumers who arrive over time and can invest to raise their future valuations. The seller has limited capacity and cannot observe consumers' arrival time, investment, or ex-post valuations. Offering advance sale with a partial refund to early arrivals and a posted price to late arrivals maximizes the seller's profit. The seller sets the late-arrival price above the refund, biasing allocation toward early arrivals and inducing over-investment relative to the first best. Allocations are more efficient, and late arrivals better off, than in the counterfactual in which the distribution of early arrivals' valuations is exogenously fixed.
Work in progress
Denunciation [Draft abstract coming soon]
Publications (Pre-doctoral)
Newly Available Individual-Level U.S. Tax Data from 1969-1994 (with J. Trent Alexander, David Bleckley, Jonathan Fisher, Katie Genadek, and Susan Hautaniemi Leonard), National Tax Journal, Forthcoming.
Twins Less Frequent Than Expected Among Male Births in Risk Averse Populations (with Deborah Karasek, Julia Goodman, Alison Gemmill, April Falconi, Terry Hartig, and Ralph Catalano), Twin Research and Human Genetics, June 2015.
Very Low Birthweight: Dysregulated Gestation versus Evolutionary Adaptation (with Ralph Catalano, Deborah Karasek, Alison Gemmill, April Falconi, Julia Goodman, and Terry Hartig), Social Science and Medicine, May 2014.