Microeconomic Theory IV: Information and Contract Theory
MIT OpenCourseWare's graduate microeconomics sequence turns to information and contract theory, covering decision making under uncertainty, risk sharing, moral hazard, adverse selection, mechanism design, and incomplete contracting. The course builds the standard toolkit economists use to analyze situations where one party knows more than another, from insurance markets riddled with adverse selection to employment contracts designed around moral hazard. Mechanism design gets treated as its own topic, examining how to structure rules so that self-interested agents reveal information or reach efficient outcomes. Incomplete contracting closes the course, looking at why real-world agreements cannot specify every contingency and what that means for firm boundaries and ownership. Materials include lecture notes and problem sets, following MIT's typical OCW format, with no video lectures indicated. The course is aimed at advanced graduate students already familiar with core microeconomic theory, and it is free to access under MIT's open courseware license, with no certificate offered.