Essays on contract theory applied to international finance

Recent decades have been characterized by an increasing interest in the theory of incentive schemes. The three essays in this thesis use the principal-agent methodology to explain some institutional arrangements encountered in the field of international finance.; Chapter I is concerned with the existence of a special type of contract: the antichresis contract. The antichresis contract is a financial contract by which a tenant (the creditor) makes a loan to the landlord (the debtor) against the use of a property. The chapter develops a model of monopolistic screening and interlinked markets under imperfect information to account for the optimality of the antichresis contract in an economy with an incomplete financial market. The predictions of the model are corroborated by some empirical findings related to the Bolivian economy.; Chapter II uses the theory of multiprincipals to provide a rationale for the existence of multilateral lending agencies like the World Bank and the regional development banks. The chapter shows that projects financed by multilateral and regional agencies have a large public good component and that the creation of multinational organizations is sufficient to solve the collective action problem inherent in the provision of a public good. Necessary conditions for the existence of these institutions are also proposed.; Chapter III starts from the observation that lending by multilateral agencies or the regional development banks are often seen as a means to impose Western standards on developing countries. The chapter uses the theory of multiprincipals to evaluate the impact of the regulatory process that takes place between governments and international organizations on the projects which are eventually implementation.