IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/rje/randje/v37y20062p431-448.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Optimal State-Contingent Regulation Under Limited Liability

Author

Listed:
  • Robert Gary-Bobo

    (Universite' Paris 1)

  • Yossi Spiegel

    (Tel Aviv University)

Abstract

We consider an optimal regulation model in which the regulated firm's production cost is subject to random, publicly observable shocks. The distribution of these shocks is correlated with the firm's cost type, which is private information. The regulator designs an incentive-compatible regulatory scheme, which adjusts itself automatically ex post given the realization of the cost shock. We derive the optimal scheme, assuming that there is an upper bound on the financial losses that the firm can sustain in any given state. We first consider a two-type, two-state case, and then extend the results to the case of a continuum of firm types and an arbitrary finite number of states. We show that the first-best allocation can be implemented if the state of nature conveys enough information about the firm's type and/or the maximal loss that the firm can sustain is sufficiently large. Otherwise, the solution is characterized by classical second-best features.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert Gary-Bobo & Yossi Spiegel, 2006. "Optimal State-Contingent Regulation Under Limited Liability," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 37(2), pages 431-448, Summer.
    • Handle: RePEc:rje:randje:v:37:y:2006:2:p:431-448
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Daniel Danau & Annalisa Vinella, 2017. "Contractual design in agency problems with non-monotonic cost and correlated information," SERIES 02-2017, Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza - Università degli Studi di Bari "Aldo Moro", revised Mar 2017.
    2. Leon Yang Chu & David E. M. Sappington, 2010. "Contracting with private knowledge of signal quality," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 41(2), pages 244-269, June.
    3. Daniel Danau & Annalisa Vinella, 2020. "A note on optimal contracting with public ex post information under limited liability," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 49(1), pages 47-74, March.
    4. Daniel Danau & Analisa Vinella, 2016. "On the optimal use of correlated information in contractual design under limited liability," Economics Working Paper Archive (University of Rennes 1 & University of Caen) 2016-05, Center for Research in Economics and Management (CREM), University of Rennes 1, University of Caen and CNRS.
    5. Brown, David P. & Sappington, David E.M., 2020. "Motivating the optimal procurement and deployment of electric storage as a transmission asset," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    6. Chillemi, Ottorino & Galavotti, Stefano & Gui, Benedetto, 2020. "Optimal contracts with contingent allocation," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 192(C).
    7. Marina Halac & Pierre Yared, 2022. "Instrument-Based versus Target-Based Rules [“The Economics of Labor Coercion”]," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 89(1), pages 312-345.
    8. Danau, Daniel & Vinella, Annalisa, 2010. "Multi-agent contracting with countervailing incentives and limited liability," SIRE Discussion Papers 2010-13, Scottish Institute for Research in Economics (SIRE).
    9. Sandrine Ollier, 2007. "On the generalized principal-agent problem: a comment," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 11(1), pages 1-11, June.
    10. Sandrine Ollier, 2007. "On the generalized principal-agent problem: a comment," Post-Print hal-00447191, HAL.
    11. Armstrong, Mark & Sappington, David E.M., 2007. "Recent Developments in the Theory of Regulation," Handbook of Industrial Organization, in: Mark Armstrong & Robert Porter (ed.), Handbook of Industrial Organization, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 27, pages 1557-1700, Elsevier.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:rje:randje:v:37:y:2006:2:p:431-448. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.rje.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.