TIROLE Jean

A ruler who does not identify with a social group, whether on religious, ethnic, cultural or socioeconomic grounds, is confronted with a trade-off between taking advantage of the out-group population’s eagerness to maintain its identity and inducing it to “comply” (conversion, quit, exodus or any other way of accommodating the ruler’s own identity). This paper first nests economists’ extraction model, in which rulers are revenue-maximizers, within a more general identity-based model, in which rulers care also about inducing people to lose their identity, both in a static and an evolving environment. The paper then constructs novel data sources to test the implications of both models in the context of Egypt’s conversion to Islam between 641 and 1170. The evidence comes in support of the identity-based model.

Emmanuel Farhi passed away on July 23, 2020. After depicting his scientific style and values, this tribute discusses how he transformed the theory of taxation, macroeconomics, and international finance, and describes his approach and insights through a sample of his remarkable contributions to economics.

Autocratic regimes, democratic majorities, private platforms and religious or professional organizations can achieve social control by managing the flow of information about individuals' behavior. Bundling the agents' political, organizational or religious attitudes with information about their prosocial conduct makes them care about behaviors that they otherwise would not. The incorporation of the individuals' social graph in their social score further promotes soft control but destroys the social fabric. Both bundling and guilt by association are most effective in a society that has weak ties and is politically docile.

The paper analyzes the impact of current (spot) and future tradable pollution rights markets on the decisions of potential polluters. Polluters can buy permits, invest in pollution control, or stop production. We show that current markets induce excessive investment in pollution control. The introduction of a future rights market reduces the incentive to invest, but it is not the optimal way to control pollution. A menu of pollution rights options today for the future, possibly combined with joint sales with pollution rights today leads to higher welfare. Because of its emphasis on long-run demand elasticities, and on rent extraction, the results obtained can be applied in a variety of situations such as electricity demand management, public transport, bypass in telecommunications, or future sales of a private monopoly.

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"We study the incentives of a regulated monopoly to supply quality. For an experience good, the current level of sales yields no information about quality and the cost reimbursement rule is the only instrument to achieve the conflicting goals of revision of quality and cost reduction. A high concern for quality in the discount factor raises the power of incentive schemes. In contrast, for a search good, direct sales incentives can be provided to supply quality : whether a high quality concern drives optimal contracts toward cost-plus or fixed-price contracts then depends on whether quantity and quality are net substitutes or net complements.".

"This paper develops a normative model of regulatory policy toward bypass and cream-skimming. It analyses the effects of bypass on second-degree price discrimination, on the rent of the regulated firm and on the welfare of low-demand customers. It shows that pricing under marginal cost may be optimal for the regulated firm and excessive cream-skiming occurs if access to the bypass technology is not regulated and that the prohibition of bypass may increase or decrease the regulated firm's rent.".

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"We develop an agency-theoretic approach to interest-group politics. We study the potential identification of a regulatory agency with the interests of a regulated firm and of non-inudustry groups. We how that : (1) The organizational response groups have in regulation. (2) The threat of producer protection leads to powered incentive schemes for the regulated firm. (3) Consumer politics may induce uniform pricing by a multi-product firm. (4) The power of interest groups is not determined by a supply-and-demand theory, in which regulation is captured by the interest group with the highest willingness to pay. First, the regulatory inefficiencies associated with the pressures of several interest group does not depend only on its willingness to pay, i.e., on the combination of its stake in regulatory decision and of its cost of organizing and of influencing government, but also on the kind of influence it wants to exert. The group has more power when its interest lies in inefficient rather that efficient regulation, where inefficiency is measured by the degree of informational asymmetry between the regulated industry and the external monitor (Congress).".

"Public decision makers are given a vague mandate to regulate industries. Restrictions on their instruments or scope of regulation affect their incentives to indentify with interest groups and the effectiveness of supervision by watchdogs. This idea is illustrated in the context of the regulation of a natural monopoly. Much of the theoretical literature has assumed that a benevolent regulator is prohibited from operating transfers to the firm and maximizes social welfare subject to the firm's budget constraint. The tension between the assumption of benevolence and of restrictions on instruments in such models leads us to investigate the role played by the mistrust of regulators in the development of this institution. We compare two mandates : average cost pricing (associated with the absence of transfers) and marginal cost pricing (associated with the possibility of transfers). The regulator may identify with the industry, but a regulatory hearing offers the advocacy groups (watchdogs) an opportunity to alter the proposed rule making. The comparison between the two mandates hinges on the dead-weight loss associated with collusion and on th effectiveness of watchdog supervision.".

La 4e de couverture indique : "The power industry is essential in our fight against climate change. This book is the first to examine in detail the microeconomics underlying power markets, stemming from peak-load pricing, by which prices are low when the installed generation capacity exceeds demand but can rise a hundred times higher when demand is equal to installed capacity. The outcome of peak-load pricing is often difficult to accept politically, and the book explores the tensions between microeconomics and political economy. Understanding peak-load pricing and its implications is essential for designing robust policies and making sound investment decisions. Thomas-Olivier Leautier presents the model in its simplest form, and introduces additional features as different issues are presented. The book covers all segments of electricity markets: electricity generation, under perfect and imperfect competition. retail competition and demand response.

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The paper analyzes the impact of price caps agreed upon by industry participants. Price caps, like mergers, allow firms to solve Cournot's multiple marginalization problem. but unlike mergers, they do not stifle price competition in case of substitutes or facilitate foreclosure in case of complements. The paper first demonstrates this for non-repeated interaction and general demand and cost functions. It then shows that allowing price caps has no impact on investment and entry in case of substitutes. Under more restrictive assumptions, the paper finally generalizes the insights to repeated price interaction, analyzing coordinated effects when goods are not necessarily substitutes.

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"In some thirty years, few industries have undergone a transformation comparable to that which has "changed the game" in the various energy sectors: oil, gas, coal, electricity, nuclear, and renewables. Technological changes, the balance of power between countries, the behavior of players, and political decisions that put the market at the heart of all reforms are all major factors that have changed the very fundamentals of these activities. How are prices formed on these different markets? How can we take into account the two dimensions of energy: a strategic good, but also a public service? Is what applies to one energy source relevant to the others? Can the market always replace planning and under what conditions? What are the links between energy and the environment? These are some of the questions, among many others, to which this book - in its updated 3rd edition - provides answers. It takes stock of these changes, based on a rigorous economic analysis of the sectors and the "energy good" as a whole. It also provides numerous figures and institutional data presented in a synthetic manner and offers critical analyses of policies conducted in Europe and around the world. While the approach is primarily methodological, the text also provides numerous examples of practical situations observed and case studies. This book can satisfy a wide audience: engineering students, undergraduate and graduate students of economics and political science, managers and observers of the energy industry and the economy as a whole. The 1st edition of Energy won the AFSE prize for the best economics textbook (2011)".

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When Jean Tirole won the 2014 Nobel Prize in Economics, he suddenly found himself being stopped in the street by complete strangers and asked to comment on issues of the day, no matter how distant from his own areas of research. His transformation from academic economist to public intellectual prompted him to reflect further on the role economists and their discipline play in society. The result is Economics for the Common Good, a passionate manifesto for a world in which economics, far from being a "dismal science," is a positive force for the common good. Economists are rewarded for writing technical papers in scholarly journals, not joining in public debates. But Tirole says we urgently need economists to engage with the many challenges facing society, helping to identify our key objectives and the tools needed to meet them. To show how economics can help us realize the common good, Tirole shares his insights on a broad array of questions affecting our everyday lives and the future of our society, including global warming, unemployment, the post-2008 global financial order, the euro crisis, the digital revolution, innovation, and the proper balance between the free market and regulation. Providing a rich account of how economics can benefit everyone, Economics for the Common Good sets a new agenda for the role of economics in society.

The back cover states: "With this first book in French intended for a wide audience, the 2014 Nobel Prize in Economics invites us to share his passion for this discipline. He defends a certain vision of economics, a science that combines theory and facts in the service of the common good, and of the economist, a researcher and a man of the field. This means that the reader enters the workshop of an economist and travels through the subjects that affect our daily lives: the digital economy, innovation, unemployment, climate change, Europe, the State, finance and the market. By drawing up a panorama of the major issues of today's economy, Jean Tirole takes us to the heart of the theories of which he is the father.

Building on the idea that accounting matters for corporate governance, this paper studies the equilibrium interaction between the measurement rules that firms find privately optimal, firms' governance, and the liquidity in the secondary market for their assets. This equilibrium approach reveals an excessive use of market-value accounting: corporate performance measures rely excessively on the information generated by other firms' asset sales and insufficiently on the realization of a firm's own capital gains. This dries up market liquidity and reduces the informativeness of price signals, thereby making it more costly for firms to overcome their agency problems.

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The back cover states: "Macroprudential policy is now a core mission of many central banks, along with monetary policy. Introduced in the wake of the 2008 crisis, it aims to regulate the financial system as a whole and prevent systemic risk. This book provides a comprehensive view of macroprudential policy, both in terms of its objectives and its operational implementation. It is the first book in French devoted to this subject. The articulation between theory and practice is carried out with rigor and pedagogy, through numerous examples and illustrations. The authors, all specialists in economics and financial regulation, have solid expertise on these issues, having themselves contributed to the implementation of this new policy in France. Working in the Financial Stability Directorate of the Banque de France, they have actively participated in the development of reflections on this topic, both at the national level, notably on behalf of the High Council for Financial Stability, and in European and international working groups. Macroprudential Policy is a book intended for students at universities and business schools as well as for professionals wishing to understand the fundamental issues of this new policy. Because of its didactic nature, it can also be addressed to a wider public interested in macroeconomics, crises and financial regulation.

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Opinion polls regularly show a strong interest in economic issues among the general public. However, economists are sometimes viewed with a certain amount of mistrust. This mistrust is fed by their failings: inability to foresee the 2008 financial crisis, conflicts of interest that are not always revealed, difficulty in reaching agreement or, conversely, a tendency to think in the same way, and a lack of pedagogical sense. The dialogue between economists and public opinion or the world of public decision making is made even more difficult by the specificities of the discipline, notably the uncertainty about its results and the participation of economists in the society they claim to decipher independently.

The recent unravelling of the Eurozone's financial integration raised concerns about feedback loops between sovereign and banking insolvency. This article provides a theory of the feedback loop that allows for both domestic bailouts of the banking system and sovereign debt forgiveness by international creditors or solidarity by other countries. Our theory has important implications for the re-nationalization of sovereign debt, macroprudential regulation, and the rationale for banking unions.

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Boosted by new technologies, platforms such as Uber and Airbnb, but also Facebook and Google, are the new intermediaries of today. Connecting users or different groups of users and allowing them to interact, these platforms are experiencing phenomenal success, commensurate with the upheavals and fears they raise. Based on the internationally recognized expertise of the authors, this book uses multiple examples to uncover the reasons for such success without ignoring the failures. It shows how platforms operate, how they differ from traditional businesses and how they are transforming the global economy, forcing other businesses to reinvent themselves in order to survive. "This book is fascinating from start to finish. It will provide food for thought for economic actors as well as for all those who want to better understand the evolution of our economy and our society," Jean Tirole, 2014 Nobel Prize in Economics [Source: 4th cover].

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While the debate on cost and market-value accounting has been raging for years, economists lack a framework allowing a comparison of their relative merits. This paper considers an agency model in which the measurement of an asset can be based on public market data (marking to market) and/or on the realization of its value through costly resale to an informed buyer (taking to market). At the optimal contract, noisier market data lead to cost accounting and gains trading (selling winners/keeping losers) whereas accurate data naturally favor market-value accounting. The quality of market data and the magnitude of resale costs both depend on the volume of transactions, and therefore on accounting rules. The paper studies the mutual feedback between individually optimal accounting rules and asset market liquidity. This equilibrium approach reveals a socially excessive use of market-value accounting that dries up market liquidity and reduces the informativeness of price signals.

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The back cover states: "With this first book in French intended for a wide audience, the 2014 Nobel Prize in Economics invites us to share his passion for this discipline. He defends a certain vision of economics, a science that combines theory and facts in the service of the common good, and of the economist, a researcher and a man of the field. This means that the reader enters the workshop of an economist and travels through the subjects that affect our daily lives: digital economy, innovation, climate change, Europe, the State, finance, and markets. By drawing up a panorama of the major issues of today's economy, Jean Tirole takes us to the heart of the theories of which he is the father.

The back cover states: "With this first book in French intended for a wide audience, the 2014 Nobel Prize in Economics invites us to share his passion for this discipline. He defends a certain vision of economics, a science that combines theory and facts in the service of the common good, and of the economist, a researcher and a man of the field. This means that the reader enters the workshop of an economist and travels through the subjects that affect our daily lives: digital economy, innovation, climate change, Europe, the State, finance, and markets. By drawing up a panorama of the major issues of today's economy, Jean Tirole takes us to the heart of the theories of which he is the father.

Industrial economics has undergone remarkable changes in the last decade, with the emergence of coherent models of internal and external corporate strategy, thanks to the spectacular progress made in organizational theory and game theory. The field of industrial economics covers the internal organization of firms (allocation of tasks and responsibilities, incentive methods, accounting and financial structures) and their strategic positioning (pricing, service quality, distribution networks, investment and product choice, research and development). Industrial economics has thus developed a microeconomics that is closer to the concerns of decision-makers. Its approach and language have spread rapidly in Anglo-Saxon countries among business schools, consulting firms, corporate economists, competition officials and major government agencies. A similar evolution is taking place in continental Europe. This book synthesizes the achievements of industrial economics in a very complete and pedagogical way. It can be used to support a course in general microeconomics or industrial economics. It can also be used in courses on marketing or business strategy. It will be of interest to professionals concerned with competition policy, regulation, or industrial policy. This book is a translation of the course given by the author at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and several other universities. It was published by MIT Press under the title The Theory of Industrial Organization and has been translated into several languages [Source: 4th cover].

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Parties in financial markets, industries, compensation design or politics may negotiate on either a piecemeal or a bundled basis. Little is known about the desirability of bundling when values are common and/or information endogenous. The paper shows that bundling encourages information-equalizing investments, thereby facilitating trade. It accordingly revisits and qualifies existing knowledge on security design.

When will solidarity, which emerges spontaneously from the fear of spillovers, be reinforced through contracting? The optimal pact between countries that differ substantially in their probability of distress is a simple debt contract with market financing, a borrowing cap, but no joint liability. While joint liability augments total surplus, the borrowing country cannot compensate the deep-pocket guarantor. By contrast, the optimal pact between two countries symmetrically exposed to shocks with an arbitrary correlation is a simple debt contract with joint liability, provided that shocks are sufficiently independent, spillovers sufficiently large, liquidity needs moderate and available sanctions sufficiently tough.

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The financial crisis that began in 2007 in the United States swept the world, producing substantial bank failures and forcing unprecedented state aid for the crippled global financial system. Bringing together three leading financial economists to provide an international perspective, Balancing the Banks draws critical lessons from the causes of the crisis and proposes important regulatory reforms, including sound guidelines for the ways in which distressed banks might be dealt with in the future. While some recent policy moves go in the right direction, others, the book argues, are not sufficient to prevent another crisis. The authors show the necessity of an adaptive prudential regulatory system that can better address financial innovation. Stressing the numerous and complex challenges faced by politicians, finance professionals, and regulators, and calling for reinforced international coordination (for example, in the treatment of distressed banks), the authors put forth a number of principles to deal with issues regarding the economic incentives of financial institutions, the impact of economic shocks, and the role of political constraints. Offering a global perspective, Balancing the Banks should be read by anyone concerned with solving the current crisis and preventing another such calamity in the future.

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"In some twenty years, few industries have undergone a transformation comparable to that which has "changed the game" in the various energy sectors: oil, gas, coal, electricity, nuclear, and renewables. Technological changes, the balance of power between countries, the behavior of players, and political decisions that put the market at the heart of all reforms are all major factors that have changed the very fundamentals of these activities. How are prices formed on these different markets? How can we take into account the two dimensions of energy: strategic goods but also public services? Is what applies to one energy source relevant to others? Can the market always replace planning and under what conditions? What are the links between energy and the environment? These are some of the questions, among many others, to which this book, in its second updated edition, provides answers. For the first time, it provides an assessment of these changes, based on a rigorous economic analysis of the sectors and the "energy good" as a whole. It also provides numerous figures and institutional data, presented in a synthetic manner, and offers critical analyses of policies conducted in Europe and around the world. While the approach is primarily methodological, the text also provides numerous examples of practical situations observed and case studies. This book can satisfy a wide audience: engineering students, undergraduate or graduate students in economics or political science, managers and observers of the energy industry and the economy. [Source: 4th cover].

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France is distinguished by the mixed nature of its health insurance system. Two types of operators contribute to the coverage of the same care: social security and complementary organizations. This type of organization leads to high management costs and encourages higher prices for care. The current regulation of complementary health insurance also encourages risk selection, which produces inequalities in access to insurance and care.

France is distinguished by the mixed nature of its health insurance system. Two types of operators contribute to the coverage of the same care: social security and complementary organizations. This type of organization leads to high management costs and encourages higher prices for care. The current regulation of complementary health insurance also encourages risk selection, which produces inequalities in access to insurance and care.

This paper consists of four chapters. The first chapter analyzes the sustainability of sovereign debt when the sovereign can offset its residents to reduce the possible collateral effects of a default. It is shown that in the absence of reputational costs, sovereign debt is sustainable under the condition that domestic exposures are not observable by the sovereign. The second chapter extends this analysis to the case of two countries where the private sector of one can be exposed to the sovereign debt of the other. I then show that in the case of a sovereign default, it may be optimal to compensate the private sector by buying the defaulting sovereign debt. Ex ante, this results in an implicit guarantee on sovereign debt. The third chapter considers the interaction between sovereign debt and fiscal policies. It establishes that when the domestic economy is Ricardian, the government can perfectly compensate its residents and, thus, there are no internal costs to default. The fourth chapter, co-authored with Roberto Pancrazi, studies the theoretical impact of the costs of participating in insurance markets on their ability to smooth consumption in the presence of idiosyncratic revenue risks. This theoretical impact is then confronted with the data.

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The back cover states: "The severity of the financial crisis that began in the summer of 2007 continues to surprise not only the general public, but also market practitioners, many economists and journalists. Faced with this challenge, as Jean Tirole writes in his preface, "Financial Stability takes the side of long-term thinking. It goes back to basics: what do theory and empirical observations tell us about the causes and consequences of financial instability? What lessons can we learn from modern economics to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past in an increasingly complex financial world?" This book opens with a presentation of the concepts that are essential to the analysis of financial stability, such as liquidity, leverage, bubbles or systemic risk. Then, it reports on the causes and propagation mechanisms of the first financial crisis of the 21st century. He analyzes public policy instruments by distinguishing between actions on incentives, such as the use of market discipline or taxation, and constraints on activities, such as limiting the activities of financial institutions or markets. Liquidity and solvency standards are dealt with specifically, because of their importance and their mixed nature (action on incentives and constraints on compliance). Macro-prudential policies and the interaction of economic policies with financial stability are then presented. Finally, the architecture and governance of the institutions in charge of implementing financial stability policies are described and assessed. Jean Tirole notes that "Financial Stability makes an enormous literature accessible". This book reviews technical subjects that were once almost absent from the academic world, but which are essential to a good understanding.

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The last twenty years have seen the role of the state in the productive sector change considerably. From being a producer or political actor deeply involved in the management of firms, it has become a regulator and provider of incentives. Its new role required a renewed conceptual framework for designing tariff reforms, making firms more accountable for their costs, facilitating competition for or in the market without expropriating incumbents, or solving problems related to the state's lack of commitment and its eventual capture. [4th cover page].

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The sub-prime crisis has shown a harsh spotlight on the practices of securities underwriters, which provided too many complex securities that proved to ultimately have little value. This uproar calls attention to the fact that the literature on intermediaries has carefully analyzed their incentives, but that we know little about the broader strategic dimensions of this market. The paper explores three related strategic dimensions of the certification market: the publicity given to applications, the coarseness of rating patterns and the sellers' dynamic certification strategies. In the model, certifiers respond to the sellers' desire to get a chance to be highly rated and to limit the stigma from rejection. We find conditions under which sellers opt for an ambitious certification strategy, in which they apply to a demanding, but non-transparent certifier and lower their ambitions when rejected. We derive the comparative statics with respect to the sellers' initial reputation, the probability of fortuitous disclosure, the sellers' self-knowledge and impatience, and the concentration of the certification industry. We also analyze the possibility that certifiers opt for a quick turnaround time at the expense of a lower accuracy. Finally, we investigate the opportunity of regulating transparency.

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The first chapter of this thesis focuses on the link between the behavior of the firm and the structure of its ownership and management. In particular, the study focuses on the different management styles implied by the presence of the founder's family in the shareholding or in the management team. In the second chapter, we show how internal governance mechanisms can supplant traditional corporate governance arrangements and exert effective discipline on the firm's managers. This empirical study is supported by a theoretical analysis that focuses more generally on the role of preference independence within organizations. The final chapter of this thesis empirically investigates the links between collateral value and investment policy. The analysis focuses specifically on the real estate assets owned by large U.S. firms.

The first chapter studies the "hidden costs of rewards" in a dynamic perspective with a principal informed. We then show that there is a habituation effect to the reward. In a long term relationship, we observe that the principal avoids creating habituation of the agent, while the agent has no interest in showing too much enthusiasm for his tasks. The second chapter proposes a justification for discretionary bonus payments in a finitely repeated principal-agent relationship. The principal may choose to discretionarily distribute bonuses in order to provide the agent with credible information about her performance. The third chapter focuses on studying the credibility of advice provided by an informed intermediary. It studies the dissemination of information in a two-sided bargaining model via the intermediary who, prior to the bargaining, observes a non-specific signal of the value of the good to the buyer.

The role of innovation and technical progress in economic growth explains the interest of public authorities in encouraging private firms to innovate. On the other hand, the innovation process has some characteristics that are not conducive to private investment and that partly justify public intervention. The purpose of my thesis is to study the different means available to public authorities to encourage firms to invest in R&D (patent system, research subsidies, cooperation agreements). The first chapter of the thesis is devoted to a quick review of the economic literature on these topics. The second chapter studies the question of the social utility of a patent system as an instrument of knowledge diffusion and as a means of appropriating research results. The last chapter takes up the question of the utility of the three instruments but this time assuming that the different instruments can be used simultaneously.

This thesis is based on corporate finance, characterized by the use of game theory and information economics tools to analyze the financial choices of firms. Chapter 1 analyzes the auction of objects of uncertain value: a buyer will have higher welfare by participating in the sale of an object of uncertain value than in the sale of an object of uncertain value. Chapter 2 explores the possibility that financial contracts may pursue anti-competitive objectives: by purchasing sufficiently risky financial rights, an investor may commit to an entrepreneur not to finance another similar project. Thus, when financial markets are imperfectly competitive, bank equity investments may promote industrial concentration. Chapter 3 studies a general equilibrium model including moral hazard and bank anti-selection: a regulator can combat these problems by imposing a capital requirement and auditing banks ex ante and ex post. A regulator with a strong reputation will only use the amount of capital to solve the moral hazard problem, but a regulator with a weak reputation will also use it to solve the anti-selection problem. In the latter case, the economy has two equilibria and a crisis of confidence may occur. The right response to a crisis may be tighter regulation. Chapter 4 studies how splitting the rights of a firm' s income into a safe (debt) and a risky part can generate more information about the firm' s future income and thus better motivate managers.

The first essay introduces a Markovian revelation principle in contracts characterized by multiple bilateral relationships with a common agent . The next analyzes information exchange . The third examines the case of a monopoly that sells a durable good, which is then traded on a secondary market . The last essay deals with auctions of divisible goods, such as government securities.

This thesis is part of the framework of corporate finance, characterized by the use of tools from game theory and information economics to analyze the financial choices of firms. The first three chapters deal with the interaction between firms' financial choices and their behavior on the goods market. The first chapter provides a review of the literature on this topic. The second chapter explores the possibility that financial contracts may pursue anti-competitive objectives. By purchasing sufficiently risky financial rights, an investor can commit to an entrepreneur not to finance other similar projects. Thus, when financial markets are imperfectly competitive, bank ownership can promote industrial concentration. The third chapter studies the impact of resource reallocation in conglomerates on the competitive behavior of its subsidiaries. The optimal reallocation of resources is such that units that face stiffer competition are subsidized. This implies that internal capital markets provide competitive advantages and costs. The fourth chapter analyzes the financial contracts signed by start-ups with venture capitalists. In an optimal contract framework, we derive the allocation of final revenue and control rights in the venture capital contract. In the optimal contract, we find a negative correlation between the investor's risk and control rights. This result is supported by recent empirical studies of venture capital.

This thesis is a collection of three articles on the regulation of banks. The first chapter studies the optimal regulation of the use of derivative instruments, when the regulator cannot distinguish between risk-increasing and risk-decreasing uses of these instruments. Since the regulator also cannot observe the banker's investment policy (his effort), he faces a double moral hazard problem. The main result is that optimal solvency ratios do not depend on risk exposure, but only on the incentive problem. Chapters two and three deal with liquidity risk. The second chapter compares two sources of liquidity for banks: liquid assets and the interbank market. On the one hand, liquid assets are expensive. On the other hand, transactions between banks take place with asymmetric information, which leads to credit risk in the interbank market. The chapter determines total welfare with and without credit rationing, and concludes that total welfare is higher when there is no rationing. The final chapter summarizes the various theories regarding bank investments in liquid assets. It tests and discusses the predictions of these theories on data for Mexican banks.

This thesis consists of two parts. The first is entitled "Optimal Organization of Political Institutions" and the second is entitled "Optimal Auctions: An Application to Finance". Both consider almost standard "principal-agent" models, in which the agent is better informed than the principal and the information that the agent possesses is valuable to the principal insofar as the principal's ability to make good decisions depends on this information. The first part analyzes the distortions caused by the existence of informational asymmetries within political systems, more specifically this informational asymmetry affecting the legislative decision-making process. We also consider the existence of a second source of distortion represented by the existence of a pressure group that actively tries to influence the choices of policy makers. We analyze here the impact of these elements on the choice of the organizational form of the political system. The second part describes an optimal auction model in which the "seller" is assumed to face two groups of differently informed buyers: one group receives a signal about the value of the good at auction and the other remains uninformed. We derive the optimal auction in which the informed buyers dream, truthfully slow to the principal their signals. We also present an application of this model to the analysis of public stock offerings.

The purpose of this thesis is to study the coherence of dynamic choices in various contexts of strategic interaction. Three themes are more particularly addressed: the coordination of decisions, the irreversibility of choices and the value of information. The first part of the thesis is devoted to the coordination of agents' strategies in continuous games with almost perfect information. Our goal is to show how the introduction of public signals is necessary to guarantee the existence of perfect equilibria in this class of games. To do so, we develop an original analysis method, based on the notion of continuation correspondence. The second part of the thesis deals with information acquisition in the context of dynamically inconsistent preferences. We show that, in the absence of commitment on future decisions, an agent with such preferences can be led to voluntarily restrict the information at his disposal, in order to optimally constrain his present and future choices. This strategic ignorance behavior is more efficient than exhaustive information acquisition. The last part of the thesis is devoted to the option value of information in the presence of irreversible choices. Two models are studied for this purpose. In the first one, we analyze the dynamics of investment in a market where demand fluctuates stochastically. We show that in a monopoly, investments are systematically postponed with respect to the social optimum. In duopoly, we determine the impact of the threat of preemption on the option value of waiting. In a second model, we examine how opportunistic political parties choose their candidates based on the information available about them. We characterize the type of inefficiencies to which the parties' strategic behavior gives rise. Finally, we show that a dynamic perspective modifies the candidate selection strategy within a party by increasing the incentives to replace a candidate if he or she fails to perform.

The first part of the thesis focuses on the normative aspects of regulation. We analyze the gains from coordinating decisions in the presence of sovereign agents when transfers are socially costly. We consider a general framework with incomplete information in which multiple agents each induce externalities on the activity of others and have reservation utilities that depend on the private information parameter. When the second-order optimum is such that the regulator grants informational rents to the most efficient agents, centralized coordination reduces aggregate activity. However, coordination induces more activity when rents are (optimally) allocated to the most inefficient agents. We study several applications: the optimal structure of an industry, the coordination of r&d activities, and the allocation of non-pecuniary benefits within a firm. The second part deals with the problem of corruption. First, we study the effectiveness of measures to combat corruption when it can spread within an organization and when individuals have private information about their cost of being corrupted. It is familiar to think that the level of corruption decreases if wages are increased and control over individuals is strengthened. However, we show that in a system of internal promotions, these measures can have perverse effects on the incentives of some individuals to remain honest and can be socially harmful. We then characterize the optimal bribe offered by a client to an agent when the former ignores the latter's propensity to be corrupt. In a dynamic setting, individuals who plan to be honest in the future have a different valuation of bribes than those who plan to be corrupt. For this reason, there is an interval of stationary equilibria over which the bribe takes its values. This set shrinks when corrupt agents have a lower active life expectancy in the organization than honest agents.

The thesis consists of five articles, three of which are on the external control mechanisms of firms and two on the application of game theory to the study of competition between firms. Chapter 1 studies the financial engineering problem of allocating voting rights among the securities issued by a firm. It is shown that it may be optimal for a firm to issue non-voting securities in the perspective of a takeover bid. Chapter 2 applies the modern theory of delegation, supervision and authority to the external control of a firm. In particular, it is shown that a compromise must be found between supervision by a large shareholder and initiative left to the executive managers of the firm. Chapter 3 studies an optimal financial contract problem in a dynamic setting. It is shown that when the parties (lender and borrower) cannot agree not to renegotiate the current contract, the lender derives zero profit from the relationship. Chapter 4, consisting of two essays, extends the barrier to entry models to the case of dynamic competition between asymmetric firms. It is shown that the entry of a less efficient competitor is likely to be temporary while that of a more efficient competitor is permanent.